The Blood of Gladiators
Author: Duke Shasta
Original post: https://forums.eveonline.com/t/yc124-necwc-the-blood-of-gladiators/362637
Author’s Note: The events of this story are based loosely off the events of a February PSI (Purple, Shoot It) event hosted by @Astrocytoma. I hope sincerely that this story can convince my fellow capsuleers that our crew are not simply tools. They are people. They have their own lives … their own issues … their own hopes and aspirations. We cannot be the knife that destroys them. Our events … our actions … they cannot be the cutting block on which we destroy people’s lives. Events like these - arena fights, fleet battles - we have our reasons, be it for entertainment, or strategic purposes. They need to happen. But we must recognize the impact that such actions have on others. We cannot, should not, and hopefully will not be so ignorant as to believe that we alone matter. They matter, as well.
Entry for YC124 New Eden Capsuleer’s Writing Contest in the Prose category.
In Jita, the call went out. The demigods of space had spoken. Thirty capsuleers each sought to hire a full crew complement for a cruiser. The promise of a sign-up bonus lured crewmen of every race and background to meet with the employment brokers in the massive station, owned by the Caldari Navy. The offered salary, five times the norm, and the promise of a major bonus upon the successful completion of the mission, enticed the men and women to add their names to the queue. They paid no thought to the risk of death. The potential reward was too great. For most, it would be enough to guarantee a cushy lifestyle for the rest of their years on a world with moderate security, if not better.
Applicants from every possible background signed up in droves. They had varied resumes - some had served in their home empire’s navy, while others had absolutely no experience whatsoever. Some had crewed capsuleer cruisers before, while others had only worked on board a planet-station shuttle, while others had worked on baseliner transport ships. Most were rejected, but around a thousand lucky (or unlucky) applicants were accepted. Each was given a datacard with the name of their employer, the name of the cruiser they would serve on, the hangar they were supposed to report to, and the time that they were supposed to arrive at the listed hangar. Each applicant would, upon arrival, be directed to the vessel that would be their home for the next few hours. They would gaze around as they entered through the airlocks, surveying the vessel and mentally preparing themselves for what was to come.
The Hayashi sisters, Rose and Paige, boarded their vessel, the Omen-class cruiser PSI. Both Achur women had brought only a satchel of personal belongings, reasoning that their stay on the vessel would be short and few belongings would be required. Both of them were citizens of Sukuuvestaa, born on a small agricultural world to a pair of lowly farmers. The pair had both worked on SuVee transport ships before as mechanics, but they had no previous experience onboard cruiser-class vessels or ships piloted by capsuleers. They hoped that they would make it back to their family with a small fortune, enough to allow their elderly parents to retire and live out their years in peace.
Both women decided not to visit the suite of rooms set aside for them, instead opting to head directly for their work stations. Rose had been assigned to the engine room as a mechanic. Paige had been assigned to a Tech II heavy pulse laser turret - despite her lack of experience as a gunner, she had decided to sign up for a gunner position as well as a mechanic position, hoping that it would give her better chances of being employed. Luckily, it was near the engine room where Rose was stationed, allowing the sisters to chat while they waited for the vessel to get underway.
In a neighboring hangar, a young Brutor woman, a girl really, stepped aboard a Stabber-class cruiser and looked around. It was her first time onboard such a gargantuan vessel. Though she had no previous experience, Sitra Agulur hoped that her childhood hobby of fixing machines would help her succeed as an engineer. If all went well, she would return to the station with a significant sum of money, enough for her to buy, or at least rent, a nice apartment on the station and find a comfortable job. Hell, if all went well, she might even make enough money to move to a quiet world in the State or the neighboring Gallente Federation, where she could find a job and settle down. Anything to get away from Vevros and his sadistic enforcers.
Onboard that same vessel, Captain Bukina Stirmar surveyed the bridge. A pair of communications officers walked past her and began familiarizing themselves with their equipment. Other crewmen were inspecting one of the gunnery consoles, running final green-light checks and customizing the systems to fit their own personal tastes. In a few minutes, the bulk of the bridge crew would arrive.
Captain Stirmar inhaled the scent of fresh thruster fuel and listened to the beautiful baby’s whine of the new engines as the bridge crew ran security checks. It had been so long since she was onboard a vessel like the Great Champion. She sighed, remembering her last mission with the Republic Fleet. She had been a Lance Commander, fighting at Floseswin. Her force had been part of the counterattack almost two years ago, driving to secure Floseswin IV and bombard the planet to support the assault by Republic forces on the ground. The system itself was secured by other Republic Fleet formations. Commander Stirmar and her crew had rejoiced, believing that Floseswin had been saved from the tyrannical Amarrian oppressors. But the Republic would not retain control of the system for long. Within a few days, an Amarrian counteroffensive retook the system. The Fleet fled before the concentrated Amarrian assault. Several Republic Fleet formations, including Lance Commander Stirmar’s wing of battlecruisers, were cut off. They fled to predetermined safe spots in the system, but the Amarrians were hot on their tail. One by one, the formations were hunted down and destroyed by the Amarrian Navy. A few tried to break through the Navy gatecamps and flee the system. They failed. Commander Stirmar and her top captains decided instead to wait it out. They knew that the Republic Fleet would be amassing for a counterattack. They just had to hold out until their comrades could arrive.
However, the Amarrians had other thoughts. Stirmar had ordered her battlecruisers to warp between safe spots every two and a half hours. In order to keep the Amarrians on their toes, she also ordered an occasional raid on frigate patrols or lightly escorted Amarrian convoys, hoping that the raids would distract the Amarrians hunting for her wing. The raids had the opposite effect. Additional Amarrian units were ordered to join the hunt. Finally, on 03.04.124, one day before the Minmatar retook the system, the Amarrians tracked down Stirmar’s elusive wing of battlecruisers and smashed it. Stirmar and a small group of Republic Fleet officers escaped from the battlefield. Most, however, either perished during the battle, or were subsequently taken prisoner by the Amarrians and enslaved. Commander Stirmar retired not long after in disgrace. Now, she saw an opportunity to redeem herself. If she performed well, maybe, just maybe, she would get a commission with the capsuleer pilot, a member of the Minmatar militia.
Anastasia Natinde
The owner of the PSI was a youthful Ni-Kunni capsuleer by the name of Anastasia Natinde. She was a member of a small, nomadic wormhole industrial corporation, Anoikis Mechanicus. They made their living mining, harvesting gas, and destroying ancient Sleeper drones and recovering relics from their wreckage. A rather new capsuleer, Anastasia hoped to gain prestige within her corporation by doing well in the arena. Her boss, Chino Batti, was also attending the event. Anastasia hoped to impress the CEO enough that he would approve her promotion application. She wanted to join the militant division of the Mechanicus. Working for the Mechanicus as a miner was tedious and boring. She wanted to defend the corporation’s infrastructure and fight the ancient sleeper drones roaming their current home system. After all, recovering relics from sleeper wreckage paid better than mining anyway.
The fleet assembled outside the Jita station at 22:00 hours on the dot. The backgrounds and ethnicities of the capsuleers piloting the motley assortment of cruisers were as varied as that of their crewmembers, but all had the same goal. To win fame, glory, and wealth by coming out on top in this cutthroat competition. The prizes, after all, were nothing to scoff at. The grand prize: a fully fitted capital warship, worth billions of ISK. A true hoard. Battleships and cruisers modified with black market technology, assault frigates, skill injectors, and other ships were also up for grabs. Truly, these would be the rewards of champions - a fortune, even for the uber-wealthy capsuleer class. The fleet’s private FTL comm channel flickered to life as each capsuleer piloted their cruisers out of the massive station and began socializing with each other, catching up on recent events and wishing each other luck.
At 22:05, the event organizer, a capsuleer going by the call sign AstroCloak, piloted his Moa-class cruiser out of the station and joined the motley assortment of cruisers.
“Well, well, well,” he said over the channel. “Pretty good turnout today. We’ll give it another five minutes, see if anybody else decides to join in. Then the fun’ll begin!”
The seconds slowly ticked by. The anticipation and adrenaline was building. Each capsuleer was itching to prove themselves, earn a baptism by fire, win a fortune, and earn themselves a place in the annals of capsuleer history - a rare feat, even for the best of the immortal egger community.
As soon as the clock hit ten minutes after the hour, the comm channel crackled to life once more.
“Well, looks like this’ll be everyone. Let’s get started then!” AstroCloak transmitted, to the cheers of the eager capsuleers. “Alright, alright, I know all of y’all are excited, so let’s get on the road! Warp to the Maurasi gate and jump through, then warp to the Itamo gate and jump through. Hold on the gate!”
Seconds after the channel went silent again, the first cruisers leapt into warp, heading for the Maurasi-Jita stargate. Within minutes, the fleet was assembled, albeit cloaked, in the Itamo system, just over ten kilometers away from the stargate that they had just jumped through. AstroCloak waited a beat before warping the fleet towards a bookmark he had made earlier in the day. Private communications flew faster than the speed of light between the various cruisers as he transmitted precise vectors and coordinates to each ship. Astro watched his fleet command display. Slowly, blinking red lights began turning green as each cruiser’s pilot acknowledged the transmissions and locked onto their given vector and coordinates. Once the last light turned green, Astro ordered the fleet into warp. Two seconds later, they arrived, kilometers away from a massive wormhole. Any capsuleer who ordered their scanners to scan the wormhole would have found that, according to an earlier Caldari Navy scan, the wormhole was a K162 exit wormhole, leading to so-called Class 1, Class 2, or Class 3 systems.
“Jump through the wormhole,” Astro ordered. As soon as everyone was through the wormhole, Astro began another fleet warp sequence. Within seconds, the fleet had arrived at a second bookmark. Once again, the fleet had landed a few kilometers from a gigantic wormhole. The fleet slowly drifted toward the E545 class wormhole, and one by one, the cruisers were sucked through.
One by one, the cruisers were spat out into the middle of nowhere in the OJOS-T system in the Great Wildlands. AstroCloak’s cruiser was the last to exit the wormhole. As soon as he was sure that the fleet was fully assembled in the system, he initiated a third fleet warp, this time to another fleet member stationed at a safe spot at the edge of the system.
When the first cruisers landed at the safe spot, they noticed that another capsuleer, who flew under the callsign KnifeBlade, was sitting in a Hoarder next to a Mobile Micro Jump Unit. As soon as the last cruiser arrived, AstroCloak began transmitting over the fleet comms channel.
“Alright, so here’s how this is going to go. As soon as I say go, you will activate this Mobile Micro Jump Unit, which will propel you 100 kilometers away. Once everyone has activated the Mobile Micro Jump Unit, I will let y’all open fire on each other,” Astro announced. “Every ten minutes, I’ll shrink the arena, so we’ll start at 100 kilometers from KnifeBlade’s Hoarder, and slowly decrease by ten every ten minutes until we’re at point blank range. If you need additional ammo, call out in the fleet comm channel, and KnifeBlade will drop some for you. He’s got crates of Null, Void, and Caldari Navy issue Antimatter; Imperial Navy issue Multifrequency, Scorch, and Conflagration crystals; and Caldari Navy issue missiles. Any questions? No? Alright, then let’s do this! Y’all can activate the Mobile Micro Jump Unit now.”
Each capsuleer oriented themselves in the direction they wished to face before activating the device. Finally, the last cruiser, a Rupture, was propelled away from the Mobile Micro Jump Unit. AstroCloak watched the cruiser decelerate and come to a complete stop before transmitting again.
“... … and let’s get started! Fire at will!” Astro shouted, mentally ordering his Moa into a tight turn and firing his 200mm railguns at a nearby Arbitrator. All across the grid, lasers slashed out and kinetic projectiles were hurled at other cruisers. Drones swept across the void, firing at targets designated by their capsuleer owners. Shields were stripped off as the influx of energy overwhelmed their generators and armor plates buckled under the heavy strain. A Thorax was the first to go. Its pilot had been unlucky enough to land mere kilometers away from the reigning champion’s Moa. Having won the previous two competitions, Taylor315 welcomed the chance to draw first blood. As soon as AstroCloak gave the word, Taylor ordered her crew to open fire. They pried open crates of black market ammunition and dumped the charges onto a conveyer belt that brought the charges to a massive machine set next to the turrets. Charge after charge went into the gaping maw of the machine, which smashed open the titanium shells, exposing the plasma within, which drained into the cyclotrons of the cruiser’s particle blasters. Titanium shards were expelled from another hatch and kicked aside by crewmen as they opened fire, rapidly stripping the shields off the nearby Gallente cruiser. Stunned, the young capsuleer pilot tried to flee from the Triglavian sympathizer’s onslaught. He ordered his crew to redline the engines and fire the railguns as fast as physically possible as he burned away, trying to get some distance between him and his opponent. Taylor pursued relentlessly, driving her own Federation Navy issue afterburner above its “safe limit”. Her crew fired as quickly as they could load the weapons, kicking the discarded titanium shells into the corners of the gun compartment and throwing empty crates out the door. The relentless barrage stripped armor and hull plates off the Gallente cruiser faster than its armor repairer module could send out streams of nanites to repair the damage. Mere minutes after the first blaster charge had been fired across the void at the Thorax, a final salvo of antimatter charges manufactured by the Guardian Angels slammed into the hull plating over the cruiser’s engines and fuel compartments and broke through the weakened plates. The fuel in the compartments went up in flames, and the rear of the cruiser was soon engulfed by the conflagration. As the crew frantically fled forward or towards the nearest escape pod, the blaze crept closer and closer towards a magazine at the rear of a point defense turret compartment that was stocked with chaff, flares, and 50mm point defense rounds. When the magazine went up, the resulting explosion tore the stern off the vessel and exposed the reactor core to the blackness of space. Freshly exposed fuel lines near the reactor core were slashed open by debris, disrupting the vessel’s power generation systems and causing the cruiser to hemorrhage speed. Seconds later, a hull plate, several meters wide and a dozen meters long, slammed into the reactor. Metal components were crushed under the plate’s momentum. Generators bolted to the floor and ceiling broke in half under the strain. Other machinery collapsed on itself. A secondary explosion tore two whole decks off the hulk, further exposing the wreck to debris. Two dozen crew suffocated as their compartments were suddenly vented to space. More were already dead of burns and concussive injuries. As chain reactions tore what remained of the cruiser into shreds, five escape pods shot out of the growing debris field. One, the hydrostatic capsule of the capsuleer pilot, immediately decelerated as it cleared the debris field. The other four raced for a safe location, away from the fighting. One never made it - as the occupants within crashed it into a severed gun compartment as they attempted to evade a pair of ion thrusters torn off during one of the explosions that had doomed the cruiser. The other three found safe locations away from the fighting, deployed rescue beacons, and began broadcasting system-wide distress signals. They would be joined by more pods as more and more cruisers exploded during the furious brawl.
Nekei Hiniel
“Concentrate missile fire on that Rupture! Keep loading Scourge missiles!” Captain Stirmar ordered. “And fire the 220s at that Arbitrator!”
“Yes, ma’am!” the weapons control officer shouted back.
Deep below, in the bowels of the ship, the young Minmatar capsuleer piloting the ship, Nekei Hiniel, frowned. Her cruiser was in trouble. An Amarrian noble, Lord Kalx, and one of his capsuleer slaves were both hammering the Stabber with tungsten tipped Scourge heavy missiles from 10 and 15 kilometers away respectively. A Rupture was also bombarding the cruiser with 425mm Barrage rounds from slightly further away. Two point defense batteries had been destroyed by concentrated enemy fire. Although the main guns had not been damaged yet, Hiniel knew it was a matter of time before they were put out of commission as well. She gave succinct mental orders to her camera drone operators, ordering them to send the drones to survey a nearby brawl between a Vexor and an Arbitrator.
C’mon, c’mon, give me eyes … there! The picture popped up on a holoscreen, giving her a three dimensional view of the brawl. The Arbitrator’s pilot had gambled, focusing on speed and tank modules to give his ship longevity. It appeared that his only weapon was a pair of Bouncer I sentry drones that he had dropped next to the Mobile Micro Jump Unit. The Vexor, on the other hand, was fit for dealing a harsh death to its pilot’s foes. Energy crackled at the mouths of a full rack of Modal Electron Particle Accelerators as they spat Void charges across the void. Two Ogre II heavy drones and a pair of Hammerhead II medium drones poured additional blaster charges from smaller Gatling guns. Would I be able to get at least one of these guys off my tail? … Might as well try, I guess. I’ll be dead either way.
She sighed, drew a deep breath, and threw caution to the wind. The vessel yawed towards the brawl and leapt forward like a cheetah chasing its prey, driving as fast as the afterburner-assisted engine could handle. The warriors in the vessel fired the 220mm autocannons as quickly as they could load ammunition into the rotary cannons, paying no heed to warning messages that blared across the firing displays, warning of the possibility of major barrel damage. Clip after clip of light missiles were fired off, as quickly as the targeting system and automated loaders could handle. Finally, disaster struck. One of the elevators that moved missiles from the magazine to the aft missile launcher jammed just as the last missile in the launcher’s clip was fired off.
“Fuck!” The loader punched a nearby wall. He shouted to his fellow loader, “Call for maintenance!” The Sebiestor teen slammed his fist down on a red alarm button on a nearby console to warn the missile launcher crew of the malfunction. At the same time, he dialed quickly on the keypad on the wall and shouted into a nearby speaker, “Maintenance to Elevator #2. I repeat, Maintenance to Elevator #2. Jam in Elevator #2!”
He then ran over to his fellow loader. “Let me see … looks like the oil overheated, so the piston is fucking broken as hell. Shit!” He dragged a duffel bag of tools out from a nearby storage locker and rifled through, looking for the fire extinguisher. The maintenance technician on the deck, Sitra Agulur, ran in just as the loader found the extinguisher and began using it to extinguish the burning motor.
“What does it look like?” Agulur asked in a hurry. Like the rest of the crew, she could sense the anxiety that their capsuleer employer was feeling, and it was having a trickle down effect on the crew. They knew their lives were in danger, and they would need to work as hard as possible if they wanted to live to see another day. Agulur didn’t mind - it took her mind off of the horrors of her childhood. It had been so long since she had last experienced one of those crippling flashbacks.
On the bridge, Captain Stirmar groaned internally as she read the status reports on her datapad. Damage report after damage report flowed in. The enemy ships’ weaponry was hitting the Stabber’s armor now. They were on the brink of devastation. Stirmar looked around. Her bridge crew was working hard, but she could see the furtive glances they threw towards her and the hologram of Nekei Hiniel behind her. The looks of desperation. Bile rose in her throat along with the feelings of humiliation and shame. The feelings she thought she had left behind in Amamake along with her Republic Fleet uniform. The feelings … and the memories.
“Ma’am! We have combat probes within 5 AU!” a sensor technician called out. Captain Stirmar gazed around the command bridge of her Sleipnir class command ship, watching the command crew reviewing the damage they had sustained during their latest lightning raid, this time against a slaving facility in the outskirts of the system. She checked the damage reports again. Light armor damage, a few point defense turrets taken offline, that was it. Shields were mostly regenerated. The fleet was still pretty well held together, thank the Elders.
“Alert the rest of the wing! Align out! Warp to - ,” She ordered, looking at a map of the system for a suitable safe spot to wait out their pursuers.
“Combat probes in 1 AU!” the technician called out. “Wait, no … probes are gone! We’ve got Abaddons and Apocalypses inbound!”
“Warp out! Warp out!” Stirmar ordered. The helmsman turned back to his board and worked frantically, trying to get the fleet out before the Amarrians landed on grid.
The coordinates were transmitted. The fleet slowly began aligning. Slowly, the seconds ticked by.
“Entering warp in 5, 4, 3 … .”
“Hostiles on grid! Interceptors on approach!”
“Get us out of here!” Captain Stirmar shouted, throwing a look at the tactical display. Interceptors were burning toward the wing of battlecruisers, trying to tackle the vessels before they could flee. Abaddons, Apocalypses, and Oracles were just landing on grid, bringing their massive tachyon beam and heavy pulse lasers to bear on the fleeing Minmatar vessels.
“Shit! The Avenging Blade is tackled!” a sensor technician yelled.
Captain Stirmar spun to check the tactical. Indeed, one of her two Hurricanes had been tackled by an interceptor. Another was burning towards her second Hurricane, and two more were racing towards her flagship. Damnit. They weren’t going to make it. The Amarrians had already brought their heavy weaponry to bear on them, and their salvos were beginning to strip the shielding off her battlecruisers. DAMNIT!!!
“Bring all weapons online! Let’s take these bastards with us!”
The command crew shouted a Minmatar war cry in unison as they ramped the ship’s systems up in preparation for battle. They may die, but they would bleed their opponents badly before they went down.
Back at Loader Elevator #2, Sitra Agulur watched as the last nanites were launched from the tube of nanite repair paste and began repairing the friction damage on the elevators. “Did you find the oil?” she asked one of the loaders.
“Yeah, it’s right here,” the loader replied, holding up the canister of lubricating oil.
“Alright, give me one sec,” Agulur replied, watching the nanites work. “Yep. Alright, pour the oil there, and you should be good.” She began packing up her tools.
“Thanks,” the loader replied, pouring the oil into the designated location and activating the elevator. As the platform emerged carrying a new clip of missiles, he turned to Agulur and said, “Alright, we’re good!”
Agulur nodded as a new transmission came in from the damage control command center. “Agulur, the tech on Deck #3 is dead. I have a stuck blast door that needs to be fixed. Go handle that. I’m also going to have a runner retrieve the tools from the Deck #3 tech and meet you there to give you the stuff. Deck #3 is now yours!”
“Alright, I gotta go!” Agulur said, running off as the loaders began loading missiles into the aft missile launcher again.
On the bridge, Captain Stirmar watched as her cruiser continued to be battered by concentrated enemy fire. Drones from the two hostile Arbitrators swarmed around her vessels, pouring laserfire into the battered cruiser’s pitted armor and hull plating. It evoked memories of the death of her last command.
“Captain! We’re losing structural integrity! Most of our armor plating has been destroyed!”
“Shit! Tell damage control to get the guns fixed! On the double! We need to be able to shoot back,” Stirmar ordered over the intercom to the damage control center. “And work the armor repairers as fast as possible. I don’t care if you go over the safe limits! We need the nanites running, or we’ll be in a shitton of trouble!”
“Yes, Captain!” The reply came over the intercom. The response was immediate. Armor repairer modules throughout the ship spewed stream after stream of nanites to repair the armor plating of the battered battlecruiser.
“Captain! The Savior reports catastrophic structural damage! Their reactor is overloading!” a comms technician called out. The captain spun around in time to watch her last Hurricane implode. Hmm … … why don’t I see escape pods?
“How many escape pods were launched from the Savior?” Stirmar asked, walking over to the nearest sensor operator.
“Umm … three … no, five, ma’am,” the operator replied. Stirmar groaned internally. The Avenging Blade had broken in two, allowing for most of the crew to escape via escape pod. However, the reactor failure of the Savior meant that few of the latter battlecruiser’s crew made it out. Well, they would have had a horrible fate in store if they were taken captive anyway. Stirmar thought in a futile attempt to console herself. She felt the eyes of her crew, their hope that their captain would lead them out of this alive. The knowledge that they likely wouldn’t. She drew a deep breath.
“What’s our status?”
“15% structural integrity and 2% armor integrity, ma’am, and decreasing every second under heavy hostile fire,” a damage control technician said, reading off her datapad.
Captain Stirmar drew a deep breath before speaking. “Order a general evacuation. Immediately.”
Stirmar sighed as she remembered the sight of the Hand of Flosewin breaking apart as scuttling charges exploded at specific intervals across the vessel. She had been among the last people to evacuate the ship, having debated long and hard whether or not to go down with her command. She had hoped that, by escaping, she would live to fight another day. To redeem herself another day.
Instead, she sat helplessly in her escape pod, watching her ship explode. Watching the Amarrians conduct recovery and salvage operations. Watching as they inspected the wreckage of her battlecruiser wing, looking for intelligence - navigation, communications, and personnel logs especially - that would point them towards other stranded Minmatar warships stuck in Floseswin. Watching as they tractored escape pods and boarded them, capturing the occupants and shipping them to slaving facilities all over the system. Her subordinates. The crewmembers of her command, who would never make it home. Who would live out the rest of their lives in servitude. Instead of heroes, they would be treated with contempt as if they were criminals. They would never see their families again. Even death was preferable to capture, and Stirmar had led them to capture. Even worse, her pod was ignored. The Amarrians never picked it up, even as they combed through the wreckage to recover almost every other pod that had been ejected during the fighting. While her fellow warriors were hauled off as slaves, Stirmar was left behind. To watch.
Stirmar was jerked back to reality by a frantic shout from a member of her Stabber’s bridge crew. “Captain! One of our 225s has been destroyed!”
DAMNIT! The captain whirled around. “Get a damage control team down there to see what they can fix! And helm, take us in evasive maneuvers. Let’s see if we can lighten up the hostile fire!”
“Captain! One of the guns in Port Turret #2 is offline!”
“Get damage control over there! Now!” Stirmar ordered. She could feel the eyes of her crew on her, looking to her to save them. And she was helpless.
“The runner I sent to pick up stuff from the late deck technician was killed a few moments ago. I’ll need you to go pick up the tools. Sorry. It’s on the way to your next assignment: One of the guns in Port Turret #2 is offline. We need it fixed,” a damage control supervisor had explained to Sitra Agulur.
Now, as she looked at the shredded remains of the runner and the damage control technician, she wished she could have declined the order. She felt the urge to throw up as the horrific memories, the flashbacks she had worked so hard to sequester away in the deepest, darkest corners of her mind rose once more to the forefront.
Agulur lay naked on her back on a straw mattress in a cold, damp, metal room. A tall, muscular, shirtless Brutor man stood in the corner of the room, zipping up his pants and retrieving his discarded shirt and leather jacket from the floor. Agulur winced unconsciously as she slowly rose to her feet.
Suddenly, a shockwave rocked the flimsy habitation module. Agulur’s eyes shot open as she rolled off her mattress, striking the floor with a hard thud. As she fumbled to stand up, she saw her client grab his shirt and run out the room, hurriedly zipping up his pants as he went. Agulur stumbled over to a small closet in the corner of the room and slapped her hand against a touchpad. The door opened to reveal a small assortment of garments, mostly underwear and transparent dresses. Another shockwave rocked the structure as she grabbed the nearest dress, throwing her against the wall and causing her to rip the hem.
Damnit, she thought to herself as she grabbed another dress and threw it on. She then stumbled out the door into the main corridor of the habitation module, which connected two rows, each with eight bedrooms, to the shared refresher unit at one end and the lobby at the other. She saw other clients and girls running toward the lobby. She stumbled after them. As she passed the bedroom closest to the lobby, she peered inside, and nearly threw up. Through the door’s window, she saw that something had punched through the wall of the habitation module, leaving behind a large hole that exposed the blackness of space beyond. The shredded bodies of two girls lay on the straw mattress in the center of the room. In the corner, a partially clothed man sat slumped against the wall. Much of his head had been obliterated and what little clothing he had on had been shredded by shrapnel. Another girl bumped into her as she ran for cover, pushing Agulur into the waiting room. The scene there looked surprisingly peaceful. Most of the twenty five girls at the site were huddled together under desks or next to chairs, clustering together in an instinctive attempt to protect themselves. A small cluster of partially clothed men, meanwhile, were standing in a cluster, shouting at a pair of suited men - the site owner, and his second-in-command. The peace, however, was not to last.
As Agulur ducked under the reception desk and huddled next to the young receptionist, she saw three of Vevros’ enforcers striding across the room towards the nearest cluster of girls, holding SMGs and shotguns close to their chests. She also saw the site owner jab a finger at the clients as his second in command surreptitiously moved his hand to his waistband. One of the clients shoved the Civire owner, and all hell broke loose. Both suited men drew pistols and began firing at the cluster of clients, who scrambled for cover. At the same time, the enforcers began firing salvos into the helpless girls as they huddled. Most were killed in the initial volleys of fire. Many of the rest were badly injured. As they tried to crawl towards cover, an enforcer would walk up behind them and fire two rounds from a bolt pistol into the back of their heads. The few who were only lightly injured ran every which way to try and find cover. Agulur crouched even lower in an instinctive way to hide herself.
The seconds ticked by slowly. Every thirty seconds or so, another explosion would rock the module, nearly throwing Agulur out of her concealed position. Slowly, the gunfire died down, and the screaming stopped. The receptionist hiding next to Agulur slowly peeked out. Suddenly, a flash erupted, and the girl’s headless body dropped to the ground with a thud. It took all of Agulur’s self-control to keep her from screaming and giving away her position. Instead, she remained in a crouched position, staring at the late receptionist’s headless corpse. She was in that position when the boarding party found her.
Agulur was drawn back to reality by a crackle from her intercom. “Agulur, are the tools still there?”
She shook her head to regain her focus. “Yeah, boss,” she replied. She hurriedly grabbed the duffel bag of tools, trying her best to not look at her colleagues’ shredded bodies. “I’m on my way to the turret.”
And hopefully my memories won’t come back again.
In her pod, Nekei Hiniel sighed in desperation. The Vexor was burning away from the enemy Arbitrator, which was pitching downward and drifting. Probably disabled, the youthful capsuleer thought to herself as she watched escape pods swarm away from the doomed vessel through the camera drone feed. Seconds later, the vessel broke apart as a series of controlled explosions tore through the remains of the ship.
Fuck, Captain Stirmar thought to herself. We’re dead. Instead of splitting their foes, her employer’s gambit had simply added yet another to the fray: the Vexor, which was burning at full speed to intercept the racing Minmatar cruiser. The Gallente droneboat’s mixed flight of medium and heavy drones were already digging into the cruiser’s weakened armor and hull plating, with disastrous results. Fuel running through freshly exposed fuel lines was ignited by munition strikes, starting fires, and the occasional small explosion. Weapon jams were cleared, only to be followed by new jams. The thrusters buckled under concentrated enemy fire, until the port side compartment gave way and was blown clear of the cruiser. The ship yawed in the opposite direction under the imbalanced momentum as the starboard thrusters continued to drive ahead at full speed.
In dismay, Captain Stirmar turned to face the tactical display in the center of the bridge. The picture there did little to soothe her distress. It showed a holographic model of the cruiser, with some sections in black, others in red, and the rest in yellow. The black indicated sections that had been destroyed, while red indicated armor and hull breaches and yellow indicated that shielding over the section had been stripped off by enemy fire. The picture was clear. The ship was doomed.
Stirmar turned to the hologram of her capsuleer captain in the middle of the tactical display, right in front of the model of the Stabber.
“We’re done for. Tell the crew to abandon ship,” Hiniel ordered silently. The captain turned to relay the order to her communications chief. When she turned back, her boss was gone.
“Get to the pods!” Stirmar ordered. The bridge crew raced toward the escape pods docked on the port and starboard sides of the vessel. As each pod filled, the occupants within slammed their hand on the launch button, closing the pod door and ejecting the pod into space. The executive officer took two steps towards the closest pod before realizing that his captain had not followed.
“Come on, captain! There’s enough space for you!”
Stirmar turned blankly toward her executive officer. She recalled the pain and humiliation she had suffered after her last defeat. The pain her CLAN had suffered during the hearings at Amamake. The humiliation. She had hoped to redeem herself. Instead, she had failed once more. She would not fail a third time. She drew a deep breath.
“No. Go on. But I will not go with you,” Stirmar said softly. She waited until her second in command had entered the pod and launched it. As she walked back to her command chair and sat down, she heard the sonic boom of the escape pod’s launch fade into nothing. She silently watched two lines of fire racing toward the central bridge viewport as Lord Kalx fired a final salvo of missiles to finish the crippled Minmatar warship.
Life and shame.
Death and honor.
I … I choose … I choose honor.
She closed her eyes, just before the bridge erupted into a blinding flash of bright white.
Agulur was still in the port turret when the evacuation order was broadcast over the general intercom. The gun barrels had warped from excessive heat damage, and she had been busy trying to use nanites to reshape the barrel.
“Damnit! Let’s go! Let’s go!” the commander of the gun crew ordered, waving for his crew to enter the nearest escape pod. He pointed to Agulur. “You too!”
Agulur ran over to the orange rimmed pod and ducked inside. The gun commander was the last to enter. After he entered the pod, he slapped his hand on a touchpad, which closed the pod door behind him and ejected the pod with a controlled explosion.
“Thono! Get us out of the blast zone! Now!” the officer ordered. Thono, the young gunner sitting next to the pod’s control console, quickly scanned the controls before reaching for the joystick.
“You got it.”
Agulur watched the view through the pod’s viewport spin and twirl as Thono threw the pod into a series of twists and turns to get it away from the fighting. As she watched the stars and wreckage gyrate, she flashed back to that fateful moment, when her life was righted, and yet disrupted.
Agulur slowly rose to her feet with her hands clasped behind her head. Two armored men held pistols on her. She looked around, retching slightly. Bodies lay strewn across the room. Girls she had known. She barely recognized the nearest body. Body riddled with holes, with half of her head missing, Lin Saito was a young, bright girl. Agulur remembered her choked, sorrowful stories. How her intelligence had led her parents to have so much hope for her. How she had collapsed under the pressure. How she had begun using nerve sticks to relieve the stress, dissolving a stick into the water of her water bottle and consuming it through the day. How she eventually moved on to using Frentix. How she eventually turned to prostitution to pay for the drugs. How she got expelled when her drug use came to light. How she, rejected by her family and depressed, fell deeper and deeper into debt as she purchased more and more Frentix and nerve sticks from her dealer. How her dealer forced her to work for a Vevros affiliate. “Another hundred credits,” she would recall bitterly. Every month. Her dealer would ask for another hundred credits. Pay that, and she’d be free. And she was never free. Eventually, she gave up hope. Agulur sighed.
One of the armored men shifted his pistol slightly to the right in an unmistakable gesture. Agulur stepped in the indicated direction, taking care to keep her hands in the air. She was escorted to a shuttle which brought her to a large, open hangar. More armored men were milling around the hangar. A small cluster of men and women stood near a trio of shuttles similar to the one she had just ridden. Her captors escorted her towards the cluster .
As she came closer, she recognized six of the women standing next to one of the shuttles as girls from the pleasure hub. All of them wore transparent dresses at most, and some were nude. They were accompanied by two guards. Another three men, most of whom were only partially clothed, stood nearby under heavier guard. A man at the front of the cluster eyed Agulur as she approached, his gaze sweeping from head to toe. Agulur didn’t bother to try and cover up. She’d been too desensitized for that.
Meanwhile, the cruiser brawl went on. A full two thirds of the fleet had been destroyed, leaving only ten capsuleers to duke it out. The arena was now 50 kilometers in radius.
Anastasia Nakinde mentally ordered her Omen’s engine crew to increase speed as she raced after her boss’ Arbitrator. Chino Batti had spotted a faltering Moa piloted by one of AstroCloak’s fellow fleet commanders from the lowsec pirate coalition Shadow Fleet, Adobo Anara. Cornered, Anara was engaging in a brutal brawl for survival against four other capsuleers.
Anastasia mentally ordered her weapons crews to finish repairing heat damage to the cruiser’s full rack of pulse laser turrets and begin bringing them online as her boss began training his own cruiser’s heavy missile launchers on Anara’s hapless cruiser and prepared its energy neutralization modules.
Down below, at Paige Hayashi’s weapons station, she watched as the gunner inspected the frequency crystal loaded into the turret and trained it from side to side to make sure that its tracking system was working properly. He then nodded to the gun commander, who began inputting information about the target cruiser into the targeting computer. Paige sat beside the other backup gunner. She hoped she wouldn’t have to step up to man the turret, and that if necessary, she would be ready to do so.
Another cruiser exploded in a violent flash just as Anastasia and Chino’s cruisers came into weapons range of their target and began firing. Lasers scythed through space and carved through the cruiser’s failing armor and hull plating as missiles tore gaping hulls in the vessel’s structural integrity. A Rupture piloted by the fleet commander’s wife approached to assist the faltering Moa.
“Anastasia, take the Rupture! I’ll finish off this Moa!” Chino messaged. Anastasia acknowledged and threw her cruiser into a tight turn to bring her weapons to bear on the big Minmatar cruiser. She braved the constant impacts of projectiles as she carefully maneuvered her warship into killing range. Once again, lasers, modulated using Imperial Navy issue Multifrequency crystals, lanced out into the void and began digging into the Rupture. Like sharks smelling blood, other cruisers began joining the assault as well once the Rupture’s shields were overloaded. Soon, both the Moa and the Rupture exploded violently, sending debris every which way.
“ … and we are now down to FIVE competitors! Hooray! Now it is time for a twist!” AstroCloak transmitted from his pod, having lost his cruiser a while ago already. A Talos-class attack battlecruiser warped in and landed next to KnifeBlade’s hauler. “Johnny Rahl here will be our tiebreaker! All of y’all that are left probably deal out some good damage, but you guys might be able to tank each other, so you’re all going to get shot using battleship sized blasters loaded with Void. Good luck tanking those too! Arena radius is now 30 kilometers!”
Rahl locked on to the five remaining cruisers and opened fire, assigning one gun to each cruiser.
Agulur sat in a corner of her pod, alone. She took care to stay away from the other members of the gun crew, remembering the last time she was helpless, alone, and vulnerable.
“Come here,” a tall, muscular Brutor said. Agulur looked around the deserted hallway. She and the other girls recovered from the destroyed pleasure hub had simply been dumped in the nearest station and left to fend for themselves. Agulur was trying to find a place where she could find light employment, perhaps as a mechanic. After all, she had always liked machinery. As a child, she had been fascinated with how the local mechanics worked, to the point of sometimes annoying them with constant questions.
“You’re one of the refugees, right?” the Brutor man asked. When Agulur looked at him blankly, he rephrased the question. “You came from the wrecked pleasure hub, right? Probably looking for work?”
“Yeah.”
“I can put you in touch with some people. What sort of employment are you looking for?”
“Something to do with machines, possibly? I don’t have that much experience, but I kinda know my way around machines,” Agulur replied.
“Alright. Come with me. I’ll show you some places,” the man said. Agulur followed the other Brutor into a series of deserted corridors, most of which looked like service tunnels. All the while, the man asked additional personal questions, ostensibly to get a better idea of Agulur’s resume.
“How old are you?”
“Eighteen? Maybe nineteen. I … I don’t really know. One of those two.”
The Brutor nodded to himself as he walked over to a door. He opened the door and waved for Agulur to walk in. She entered the room, which appeared to be littered with random crates and tools.
“What is this room?”
“It’s an equipment storage shed. Some of the station mechanics store their tools here, so they don’t have to carry them around.”
“Why are we here?”
“Well, miss, here’s the thing. I don’t help for free,” the man said. “I need something in return.”
“Wha … I … I … I don’t have any money, though. That’s why I’m looking for work. I … I don’t have … ,” Agulur stammered. She did have some savings in a pouch, but she had left those in her closet on the pleasure hub. She had no money on her.
“Of course. All of you are the same. Never have money. Of course,” the Brutor man replied, chuckling. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have other assets.”
Agulur sighed as she remembered the way the man had extracted his “payment”. At least he had followed through with his promise. After her … payment, he had taken her outside to visit half a dozen different workshops. Eventually, she found work with one of them, fixing tools and drones for a small factory in the station. She was paid well, and had the opportunity to make more money by freelancing and taking personal jobs. One time, she had gotten a crate of ration packs, enough food to last her a month, by fixing a janitor’s camera drone. It had seemed excessive to her, but in hindsight, the drone was likely not being used for legitimate reasons. She stayed on the station for three to four months, saving up her money. Her few expenses were rent, food, and buying better, less exposed clothing. She kept a low profile, trying not to draw attention to her, and once she saved enough, purchased a ticket on a shuttle to Jita, where she heard she could seek work. While on the station, she had seen some suited men wandering the halls, questioning the station’s inhabitants. While suited men were not uncommon aboard the station, these men in particular seemed familiar. They carried themselves not like businessmen or law enforcement. Instead, they looked like some of Vevros’ enforcers. A month or so before she left for Jita, she heard some disturbing news from one of her few friends aboard the station. Apparently, a number of teenage girls and young women on the station had gone missing. Agulur had known exactly what was going on. The enforcers were seeking to reclaim Vevros’ lost property - the girls who had escaped from the pleasure hub. They were also trying to replace the girls who had been killed by kidnapping suitable replacements. A few days before Agulur left, her friend had sent her a chilling audio message, warning that the “men”, as they referred to the enforcers, knew who she was and were stalking her. A day later, Agulur saw her friend’s parents dead when she tried to visit. Her friend and her friend’s brother were both missing. That’s when she knew she had to get out.
“Hey, you alright there?” Thono suddenly asked, noticing Agulur sitting alone in the corner. He stood and carefully walked over.
“What is it?” he asked softly.
Agulur drew a deep breath.
“ … Look, Sitra, right? I know that we don’t really know each other … hell, that’s an understatement, cuz we DON’T know each other, period. But if we want to get out alive, we need to stick together. We need to work together. We need to … KNOW each other. So, are you alright?” Thono said softly.
“No, not really. I … I don’t know what I’ll do now. If I’ll survive.”
Thono nodded. “None of us do, if it is any consolation. Knowing capsuleers, they won’t bother picking up survivors. We’ll have to be lucky enough that somebody decides to swing by and pick us up before our life support runs out. But hey, at least it isn’t Anoikis, right? If we were in J-space, we would definitely be dead. Here, we have a chance.”
Agulur nodded shakily. “But that’s not everything, is it?” Thono asked softly. “You’ve experienced trauma, haven’t you? I see it. In your face, your body language … .”
Agulur looked blankly at the other Minmatar. Thono sighed softly. “And your reluctance to talk makes me think I’m hitting home. Look, Sitra, I don’t want to pry. I … if anyone here knows what it is like … what dealing with trauma is like? I do. I know best here, besides you. So I’m the best person for you to be talking to. And you need to talk, or it will eat you from the inside. And trust me, that is no way to live. I’ve seen it too many times.”
Agulur silently turned away. Thono put his hand on the younger girl’s shoulder, but she shook it off. Thono sighed again. “Alright, you don’t want to talk?” Thono said, “Fine. I’ll start. I was … … I grew up on a small, agricultural world. My family owned a small farm. I had four siblings - a brother and three sisters. First eight years of my life were … they were uneventful. I did farm work with my siblings, and all of that, it was nice. Then … then my life was turned upside down.”
Agulur slowly turned back to face Thono.
“To us, our world was small. It appeared mostly peaceful. It wasn’t. Rival factions clashed daily. Villages were leveled. Houses razed to the ground.” Thono sighed softly. “One day, they came for us. I was in my house with my family, and my uncle had brought my cousins, his niece and two nephews, to visit us. A rival force, which I eventually learned was the Losumo Rangers, attacked the settlement that day. They … they overwhelmed us quickly. My father and uncle were both killed in the initial struggle. … Then … they raped my mother and sisters in front of me and my brother. My cousins were taken into another room, where similar things happened to them. Then they carried us off. The boys, me included, were indoctrinated. Told that we were inferior, and had to fight as their servants. To fight to bring their light to other unenlightened peoples. The women and girls were sent elsewhere. We never saw them again, but there were rumors. Dark rumors. Rumors of broken women, who would never see their families again.”
A tear slipped down Thono’s cheek. “We were forced to fight as soon as we turned ten. A few years later, my cousin was killed during a skirmish with a rival faction, the Munir Expeditionary Brigade. It was constant warfare - constantly watching death and destruction, often perpetrated by our fellow warriors. Some warriors who had been taken from their families also were the most destructive. They burned, raped, killed. They showed no mercy. I always thought they wanted to bring harm - to force harm on others. To force others to feel the pain they had felt. I always resisted. Sometimes, I was harshly punished for my disobedience.”
Agulur had sat in silence, listening to Thono recount his tale. Now she spoke up. “How did you make it out?”
“It was … it was insanity. The Triglavians, of all people, saved us. When they invaded, their forces swept across the world. They were ruthless. Just as much as we were forced to be. Eventually, our leaders ordered us offworld. The brigade’s 90,000 warriors, forced or otherwise, were shipped offworld via three flights of Bowheads, under heavy battleship and frigate escort. During the evacuation, I slipped away. My brother went aboard the Bowhead. We have never met again. I doubt I’ll ever see him again.” Thono took a moment to collect himself before continuing. “I eventually made it out aboard a Republic Fleet dropship conducting civilian evacuations. I made it to Jita, where I found counseling. I learned to work through my emotions. To move on. To learn to live. Now, I want to teach you to live. So, I ask again. What happened to you?”
“I grew up in the slums. Crime was … a daily occurence. Robbery, murder, drugs … I grew up with all of it. It was … life, I guess,” Agulur began shakily. “My mother was a user. She sold her body to get money for her next fix. Sometimes, as I grew older, I would be added to the deal. I never really had a say, but I knew that the money would be going to help the both of us. I never knew my father.”
She took a deep breath. “One day, my mother died. Drug overdose. I had to find a way to make money. I did what my mom did. I knew her pimp. I knew that she had made money doing what she did. So I did the same thing. I was thirteen.”
Thono raised his eyebrows at the last sentence as Agulur continued. “But … it wasn’t enough. I dropped out of school to try and work more. Earn more. Still wasn’t enough. So when my pimp offered to put me in touch with a man who would let me make money, all expenses paid, I jumped at the chance. I took it. It looked great, you know? But it was a lie,” Agulur broke down, crying. “I was fifteen. I was sent to a brothel in another part of the slums. I was paid, a little tiny bit. But food, water, other expenses - I still paid for those. They were taken from my earnings without my knowledge. Often times, more was being deducted than I actually earned. I was … I was essentially a slave.”
Thono winced internally. He reached out and put his hand around the girl’s shoulders. This time, she didn’t shake him off.
In space, the brawl still raged. By now, only three competitors were left: Anastasia, Chino, and a Shadow Fleet FC named Odysseus Stonecutter piloting a Caldari Moa-class cruiser. Both wormholers were orbiting Stonecutter’s cruiser, their lasers, missiles, and drones bombarding the cruiser’s strained shields. Odysseus was doing his best to fight back, ordering his mind-linked gunners to fire their railguns as quickly as possible at Anastasia’s Omen, ignoring the red warnings that blared across his screen, warning of possible physical damage to the guns, automated loader systems, and gun crews. Johnny Rahl was bombarding all three competitors with his Talos, having assigned two turrets at each of the three cruisers left.
Within all three ships, crew worked frantically to repair ship damage and keep the vessel’s systems functioning properly. Rose and Paige Hayashi were both hard at work. Much of Paige’s gun crew had been wiped out by a stray Iron hybrid charge. She and her sister were hard at work trying to bring the gun back online.
“Give me the repair paste! Now!” Rose shouted at her twin sister. “Now!”
Paige rummaged through the tool bag that she had retrieved from the gun compartment’s storage locker. “I don’t see it! Where is it?!”
“Next to … the toolbox,” Rose replied, pointing in the general direction of her toolbox. “Should be on the ground next to it! Hurry!”
Paige scrambled over, grabbing the tube of paste and throwing it at her sister. She opened it and began squirting paste over the warped gun barrel. The nanites went right to work, rebuilding the barrel into its proper shape. Meanwhile, Paige and the other survivor in her gun crew began rebooting the targeting computer, carefully working to avoid cutting themselves on the shards of sharp glass left on the shattered screen. If they couldn’t bring the computer back online, even if the gun itself was fixed, the turret was as good as useless. Manual targeting would be almost impossible, especially under capsuleer working conditions. “It’s still loading!” the other gunner called out.
“Alright, as soon as it loads, start running diagnostics. We need this gun up and running!” Paige called back as she rummaged through an ammunition locker for another Imperial Navy issue Multifrequency frequency modulation crystal. Suddenly, the ship was rocked by another explosion as a salvo of Void rounds smashed through the Omen’s already strained armor, striking an ammunition locker servicing the ship’s aft point defense turrets. Paige was thrown against a wall. A pair of crystals, one Scorch and one Imperial Navy issue, rolled out of the compartment. She half rolled, half threw them towards the gunner seat of the turret. “Has it loaded yet?” she asked her fellow loader as yet another stream of nanites flew into the room and began rebuilding a shattered bulkhead.
“Yep! Diagnostic at 34%!”
“How’s the gun looking, sis?”
“Looking good. ‘Bout a minute before the nanites finish. Then the gun is ready to go,” Rose replied.
“You got another job?”
“Yep. Engine is breaking down, likely from excessive heat damage. There’s a reason afterburners have heat limits, you know,” Rose replied. She waited a beat before beginning to pack up her tools. “Alright, you’re good now.” She patted her sister on the shoulder. “Stay safe!”
As the minutes passed, the battle grew more frantic. Despite the heavy bombardment, enough of Stonecutter’s crew remained alive, and enough of his cruiser’s systems intact, for him to slowly wear down Anastasia’s warship’s defenses. Stonecutter’s every shot was now smashing into exposed hull plating, or even sometimes penetrating into the warship itself. Anastasia fought back desperately, trying to break through her opponent’s impressive tank, fueled by an expensive shield booster upgraded using illicit Gurista technology. Chino lended additional support, sending missile after missile to detonate against the vessel’s shields and armor, trying to overload the shield generators. All three vessels had deployed drones to provide additional firepower. In the fleet comms channel, most of the eliminated capsuleers cheered Stonecutter on.
Anastasia’s vessel was the first to break. Loud whoops could be heard as Anastasia’s ship approached destruction. Within the stricken Omen, the crew began to flee for their lives, racing for the nearest escape pod.
“Go! I’ll be right behind you!” Paige called to two fellow crew members, waving for them to go to the escape pods first. She ran in the opposite direction, heading for the engine room to find her sister. To warn her to get out.
Deep within the bowels of the ship, fires blazed, fueled by leaking fuel and unhampered by fire suppression systems, most of which had been destroyed or were malfunctioning due to the vast systems damage sustained by the Amarr cruiser. The flames creeped closer and closer towards the ammunition magazines in the stern.
“Rose! We have to go!” Paige shouted, running into the engine room. “Rose?”
She heard a faint groan and walked cautiously into the room to investigate, carefully avoiding the shards of broken glass and twisted metal that littered the room, remnants of machinery torn apart by friction or weapons damage. “Rose?” she repeated.
She carefully peered around a large piece of broken machinery, and gasped at the sight. Her sister was pinned under what appeared to be a broken gear.
“Rose!” Paige shouted, rushing over. “What happened?”
“I was trying to fix the gear, but an explosion dislodged it and it fell on me,” Rose replied. “Why are you here? Shouldn’t you be at your station?”
“Haven’t you heard? They’re broadcasting evacuation orders over the intercom. The ship is going to blow soon! We need to get out of here,” Paige said frantically, trying to free her sister from the debris.
“Don’t bother. This gear is a hundred pounds, at least. It’s partially broken, but it’ll still take at least three people to lift it.”
“I’m not leaving you, sis!”
“You don’t really have a choice, Paige!” the mechanic shot back. “If you stay, you’ll die too!”
“Lift it with me!” Paige shouted, ignoring her sister’s pleas. “Three, two, one!”
Together, they lifted it a few centimeters before their arms gave out and the gear fell back down onto Rose’s body. “It’s not going to work! You have to leave me!”
“I’m getting you out of here!”
“No, you’re not! Now go!” Yet another explosion rocked the stricken vessel as a fire blazing in the bowels of the vessel broke through the weakened hull plating and vented to space. “GO!!!”
“I’ll get you out of here,” Paige insisted, trying to lift the broken gear.
“No, you’re not! A few fuel pipes ruptured! There’s gasoline vapor in the air. You keep trying, and you’ll cause this room to blow! Now go!”
“I’m not letting you die!”
“You don’t have a choice, sis! Go!” Rose ordered. “If you stay, who’ll take care of Mother and Father? I’m not making it back either way, but you can make it back home! Go! GO!”
Paige tried to lift the gear off her sister again.
“It’s not going to work! Stop tryi … ,” Rose insisted, breaking off as a large piece of the ceiling broke off and slammed into broken machinery a few meters away. “You’re going to get yourself killed! Now go!”
Paige shouted back, “I’m not leaving you behind!”
“You don’t have a fucking choice! Now go!” More pieces of the ceiling and walls began breaking off as the ship slowly broke apart. “Go! At the very least you’ll be able to help Mother and Father! I won’t be around to, that’s for sure! You going to leave them behind? Alone?”
“Damn you! Damnit! Damn it all! And damn you, Rose!” Paige said, wiping tears away as she stood. “Damn you!” she repeated as she ran towards the door of the engine compartment. She stood in the doorway, framed by falling wreckage, watching debris fall into the room, wiping tears away from her eyes, before sprinting away towards the nearest bank of escape pods.
Out in space, Chino and Stonecutter brawled furiously as their crews literally fought for their lives. Blaster charges shot across the blackness of space as lasers lanced out in reply. A furious light show was erupting over a solemn backdrop of wreckage, dead bodies, and escape pods. Despite Stonecutter’s earlier disadvantage, he was still coming out very much on top. Though both ships’ structural integrity was being whittled down slowly, the process accelerated by Void charges from Johnny Rahl’s massive cannons, Stonecutter’s shield regeneration modules were able to reinforce the shields of his cruiser just enough to stave off destruction, while Chino’s armor repair modules were slowly failing and his armor plating was stripped off. Finally, a salvo from four of Johnny’s massive blasters obliterated the little hull and armor plating left on Chino’s Arbitrator and detonated the vessel’s antimatter reactor. As the vessel exploded violently, a few escape pods and Chino’s capsule were ejected and joined the growing field of debris.
“ … and we have our winner!” Astro announced over the fleet channel. “Alright, Stonecutter, have your crew evacuate. Then we’re going to add one final ship to this debris field. Alright, everyone, this concludes our fleet operation! If y’all want, y’all can self destruct your pods, or wait for Stonecutter’s ship to die, and then I’ll lead y’all back to Jita via the same wormholes you guys came in from. Hope y’all enjoyed this event, and remember to fleet up next time!”
As more escape pods swarmed out from Stonecutter’s doomed Moa and Johnny began bombarding the heavily damaged Caldari cruiser, the first few capsuleers began activating scuttling charges in their hydrostatic capsules. The charges detonated, breaking open the capsules and sending melted scraps of capsule plating and frozen globs of ectoplasmic fluid into space. Frozen hunks of human flesh, identifiable by the broken cables protruding from their backs as the bodies of capsuleers, joined the massive debris field. Upon the destruction of Stonecutter’s cruiser, other capsules began warping off as AstroCloak initiated a fleet warp to take the fleet back to Jita. They left dozens of crewmen behind. Alone. Drifting helplessly in escape pods. Amid the field of debris. A lingering reminder of the destruction that had been wrought.
EPILOGUE
Odysseus Stonecutter sat at his desk in his quarters, admiring the holo of the 14 billion ISK buffer fit Phoenix-class dreadnought he had just won. Beautiful. Just beautiful.
He picked up the datapad lying next to the display screen and quickly keyed in an access code. Within seconds, a rapid set of transactions had been authorized. Millions in Ishukone script flowed from one of Stonecutter’s payroll accounts into the accounts of his crew. A large mission completion bonus was added to a full six months of pay. After receiving a confirmation message, he quickly typed in a second access code, sending a mass message to the crew of his Moa, informing them that, despite the loss of the cruiser, he considered the mission to have been a success, and that he had transferred a mission completion bonus along with the agreed upon salaries into the accounts listed on their employment applications. The message then went on to inform them that their services were no longer required, and therefore, they were being discharged from service. Finally, the message concluded by wishing the now unemployed crewmen the best of luck in their future endeavors.
Stonecutter had no intention of retaining his former crew. Many had sustained injuries, both mental and physical, that were not only expensive to heal, but would also reduce their combat effectiveness. In addition, he had neither the will nor the capability to bring the crewmembers back to Jita from the Great Wildlands. It would be cheaper and easier to simply hire a new crew. His old crew … they would have to fend for themselves now.
Anastasia Nakinde stood in a command center overlooking her ship hangar in Jita 4-4. She watched as tugs towed her new Gila-class cruiser, fit with an abundance of expensive modules purchased off the black market, into the ship hangar. In one hand, she held a datapad, on which she had been searching for suitable nanocoatings to purchase for her newly won vessel.
“Beautiful, is it not?” a voice came from behind her. Anastasia spun around in surprise to see Chino Batti leaning in the doorway. He pointed to the ship through the command center viewport. “Congratulations on your victory. You have a name for her yet?”
“No, not yet, sir,” Anastasia replied.
“You can drop the “sir”, Anastasia,” Chino chided the younger capsuleer. “I admire your skill and tenacity. Your new vessel will be a fine warship for a squad commander.”
It took a while for Anastasia’s mind to catch up with Chino’s words. “Squad commander, sir?”
“Yes. As I said, you have impressed me with your performance. I’ve authorized a promotion to Guardian Major for you.”
“Guardian Major?” Anastasia stammered. “But … I’m only an ensign! … My … My next rank should be Sentinel Lieutenant, no?”
“Normally, yes. If you were to apply for promotion and go up before the board. Of course, as CEO, I have the authority to authorize any promotion that I deem within reason. I would have promoted you to Deputy Strike Commodore, in fact. But I feel you required exposure to leadership and fleet management first, so I decided to give you Guardian Major instead. You report to Strike Commodore Tania Shalias for your assignment as soon as we return to J165412.”
“Thank … thank you,” Anastasia stammered. “As … as a squadron commander, would I be able to run my own operations?”
“Within reason, of course. And with permission from your wing commander. But yes,” Chino replied. “I take it you have a plan?”
“When we were coming here, I noticed a Triglavian fleet a few jumps out. I think it’s connected to one of those Pochven wormholes.”
“Yeah, it probably was. You thinking about clearing it out?”
“Yes. If we get a highsec static close to a known Pochven wormhole, I’m thinking about taking a fleet out to send them back to that dark, weird region. I swear, looking at the pics, it gives me creeps, the look of that place.”
“Well,” Chino patted her on the back. “That’s my girl! You’re destined for high places, Anastasia. High places.”
Nekei stood in the boarding tube to board her corvette. She was planning to return to the Minmatar warzone, where she would take a fully crewed Tribal Liberation Force destroyer out to help in the ongoing fight against the hated Amarrian slavers. She sighed.
Did she really want to go back out again? Did she want to cause more deaths?
“You alright?”
Heniel spun around to see Uldr Sudjasi, a fellow Minmatar militia member and her mentor, sort of, standing a few feet away in the boarding tube.
“You alright?” The muscular Brutor repeated. “You don’t look too good.”
“I … I don’t know. I can’t stop thinking about my crew members. Everyone aboard was … they were people. And I led them to their deaths. Most, if not all of them! Those who made it out … they might never make it home! They might have still died!”
“Yes. I can’t say the feeling wears off … but it does. It still lingers there, but you eventually move on. You forget. And … .”
“Forget! Forget! You are saying I will forget them?!? The people who died so that I could try my luck for money? How … how immoral are we?!?”
“Nekei, relax. Please. We are capsuleers. Your crew knew what they were signing up for. You still paid them, and you provided benefits. You did your best,” Sudjasi consoled the desolate girl. “Look, Nekei. Remember the big picture. Sure, 50 people may have died under your command today. Hell, a hundred may have. Within a few years, that number will be over a thousand. Maybe even a few thousand. But remember, each and every day, each and every time you lose a ship, each and every time you lose a crewmember … you are saving hundreds more. Take today - you went out to try and make bank. What would you have done with the money? Make the Republic a safer place for our fellow tribesmen, right? Hell, you got what? A pair of Stabber Fleet Issues that you’re going to use to fight for the Republic? Protect our people? How many people will you protect using those ships, that you won today? More than how many fell in your service today, Nekei. You cannot be caught up in the body counts, or you will eventually stop functioning.”
“Perhaps … ,” Nekei said hesitantly.
“Look,” the older capsuleer said, putting a hand around the younger Brutor. “Give it a few days. Work through it. Then go out, save some people, cheer yourself up. Alright?”
“Alright,” Nekei replied, allowing her fellow capsuleer to lead her back out of the boarding tunnel.
Meanwhile, in OJOS-T system, the last Thukker scavengers finished digging through the expanding field of debris left behind by the furious hourlong arena battle. They recovered most of the escape pods and rescued the survivors within. Some survivors, unfortunately, had died when their pods’ life support system malfunctioned, or when their pod was damaged by debris. Those who survived were brought to the Thukker caravan and given the option to join the caravan. Though a few accepted the offer, the rest welcomed the Thukker promise of granting them safe transportation to the high-security space, though they pointed out that it might be a while before their caravan entered highsec again. Most looked forward to going back to familiar space. Back home. A large minority intended to find more work for capsuleers. Despite the defeats, the deaths, they still wished to try their luck again. To make a fortune again.
Sitra Agulur was not among the survivors planning their return to familiar space. She found work on a Thukker Probe-class frigate as a mechanic. Surprisingly, she would eventually discover that Thono, the gunner from the escape pod, had also taken a job aboard the same frigate, He was working as a drone operator, controlling the ship’s flights of drones. Agulur and Thono would slowly grow more and more acquainted with each other, bonding over their shared traumas. Eventually, Agulur would make enough money to buy a Probe of her own, with Thono as the pilot. Though it took a while for them to admit it, their feelings for each other were on clear display for others to see. And as long as Thono was nearby, Agulur never experienced any more flashbacks. Ever again.
Paige Hayashi, however, was one of those who took up the Thukker offer of transport back to highsec. However, she did not intend to seek another employment contract with a capsuleer. She had no intention of working with capsuleers again. She had no idea what she would do when she returned home. No inkling of how she would explain her sister’s death to her parents. No idea whatsoever as to how she would make enough money to grant her parents a comfortable retirement. All she knew was her sister was dead, and she was drifting. Tetherless.
She looked down at the necklace in her hand. A pendant, shaped like the yin symbol. The other, matching necklace, the one with the yang symbol, had been vaporized. She choked back tears. Like her sister. She would never wear the necklace again. Not until she found peace with her actions and those of her sister. Not until then.
In Jita 4-4, as the day neared its end, a number of exhausted capsuleers met in a clubhouse owned and operated by Shadow Fleet. The venue was built in what was originally a corporate office space rented by the loosely affiliated lowsec pirate coalition to serve as a gathering space.
“ … so I’m trying to give my techs time to repair the guns, right? And the repper too, cuz this man switched fire to somebody else … damned if I know who, right?” a Vherokior capsuleer named Telki Hiri. “And then … boom! Four others all started pouring fire into me. Like, geez! So I tried to get the crews to work faster, right? And the repper is finally fixed, just as they start digging into my hull, right? So I cycle it and I start firing back. And I get one … two … three reps in! And boom! They punch through my structure, so my pod ejects itself. And yeah, that’s how I went out.”
Another capsuleer halfway across the room raised her glass in a toast and called, “Hey Taylor! How’s it feel? Being bested!”
Taylor took a sip of Sarpati wine before turning to the Jin-Mei. “Look, June. You beat me. Once. Enjoy it, let it sink in, then fuck off. I’ll get you back in two months.”
“C’mon! Lose the attitude. I got a Daredevil, fully fit with black market upgrades. Plus some extra ISK. How about you?”
“A cerebral accelerator worth a billion kredits for doing a teeny little bit of damage on Chino’s ship. … “
“A billion for scratching the shielding of a cruiser? Really? Come on!” another capsuleer interjected. “Astro’s got too much money. Geez.”
“Well, remember the charity event? 50,000 of those chips of quantum entangled helium were sent to charity. And billions more kredits were put into raffle prizes, remember?” Taylor replied. “Anyways, cerebral accelerator. Billion ISK. Not bad. Probably worth more than your thing.”
June turned away in mock disgust. “What about you, Ody? You get that skill injector yet?”
“No,” Odysseus chuckled. “I think Astro is swamped with paperwork. The brokers must be making bank off of him. All those contracts he makes. Those charity contracts a few months ago? Remember those? Like … I dunno, 25? Even more, maybe? Eh … i’ll get it within a few days.”
The capsuleers around him guffawed with laughter. Very few, if any, stopped to think about the crewmen who had lost their lives in the events of the day, and those that they had stranded in the middle of lawless space. Within a few days, most would have forgotten about them. Written them off. The simple cost of capsuleer life.