EvE Fiction - Redemption

Author: Epigene

Original post: https://splatus.wordpress.com/fiction/

Entry for the YC114 Pod and Planet Fiction Contest but not elegible for prizes.

Chapter 1 - The Awakening. Entering a new life.

They did warn him about pain, nausea, blurry vision and memory loss. Then they made him sign a waiver absolving the doctors, nurses, their families, friends and pets from all liability for all eternity.

If they had just taken him under the anesthetic and sold his body parts, they would have walked free. But they did operate and they had not lied about the side effects. The memory loss prevented him from knowing why he was in pain.

And so, when he woke up, all he knew was the pain. He had no words for the pain, had no words at all and did not know time. For all it mattered, pain defined who he was for all eternity. His howl and screams were primal, had no language, showed no hope and only subsided when he had not one ounce of strength left in his body. They could have given him pain killing boosters. But those were illegal and expensive in Amarr space and the small stash was given only to customers with very deep pockets or very powerful friends. He had neither, of course.

Eventually a voice reached him deep down in his brain where his personality had been shelved during the procedure. It called “Orv”, a word that sounded familiar and he knew that it was the short version for Orvalone Signoret – his name. Orv decided to emerge from the drug-induced coma. He opened his eyes and was greeted with a blinding brightness, he gasped for air – or what passed as air in this place, a simple act that at once reduced the pain and connected him with his body. Having a body was not all that unpleasant, his skin tingled and felt as if it radiated energy. His newly recovered memory told him that this was a permanent side effect of having been injected with the sensory-stimulating nanites. And he needed those to translate his nervous impulses directly into the brain of the most fearsome weapons that humankind had ever known.

He had become a capsuleer, one of the New Eden’s residents with near god-like powers. A social class created by science made up of men and women with immense wealth, few scruples and plenty of ambition was welcoming him into their ranks. From now on, he was above the law, invulnerable and beholden to no-one. He could murder entire families, brag about it and there would be no consequences.

Which, of course was why his path led him here.

Out of the brightness came a dark oval shape. It came closer and he flinched backwards but the nurse hand clamped his head between the claws of a vise (she had a medical expression for it but a vise it was) to prevent him thrashing around and injuring the expensive equipment they had stuck into his brainstem. Bracing for impact, he clenched his fists and struggled in his restraints. The center of the oval developed contrast, lines, eyes, a nose and a chin. Orv recognized it as his sister Lydie’s face bending down and offering to kiss his brow, the old family ritual of showing affection. A memory flashed up like a jagged holoreel, his mother kissing his father in this fashion and then trying to kiss him before they went on their last journey together. He was 15 at the time and kissing was uncool and so wiggled away pretending to fuss over the single beat-up suitcase almost all of his his and his dad’s remaining possessions. Funny. He remembered the stench of the floor that had been drenched with caustic chemicals like all surfaces in the refugee camp. They made his eyes water and he worried that mum and sis would take it for tears. So he avoided the kiss, grabbed the handle of the suitcase and started walking towards security – hearing his father’s heavy steps behind him.

His sister’s face was still beautiful, the surgeons had done an excellent job, not because they were paid but because she had been found in the debris by a doctor’s family who rushed them to the front of the hospital without even checking her identity card. She bent down and kissed his brow and he recognized her expression of relief, pride and a slight jealousy. He was her big brother and on his way to avenge their parents. She was a martial art expert who had killed before in cold blood and he was a cybernetics geek with flat feet. Revenge should be her job, not his. But she was proud that he brought the courage to undergo the operation and afraid that she would lose the last person in her life she loved.

The fog started to clear. She encouraged him to breathe and someone released the restraints, the vise let go of his head.

Orv rolled over and threw up. Before the surgery, they had filled his intestines with the hydrostatic stabilization liquid which everyone just called pod-goo. It had the viscosity of sirup but did not stick to anything but itself. He retched and vomited a perfectly flat puddle into the offered metallic dish. He would have to get used to that, of course. In order to survive the massive acceleration of space ships and remain conscious, his body could not contain cavities of any sort. He had to be one with the ship or he would black out at the worst time. Non-capsuleer crews had form-fitted buckets in which they lashed themselves during maneuvers but the sheer complexity of running the ship required a more immersive solution. The goo also would fill his lungs which means he had to learn how to drown himself and not to breathe for days.

Nobody knew exactly how long a capsuleer could live locked into the egg-shaped pod that contained the goo, his body (biomass, the doctors call it) and the life support system. There used to be a time when capsules could not self destruct, leaving a stranded pilot no choice but to watch his biomass age and die at the slowest possible speed. A few capsules had been found after they drifted for decades. Their life support system was intact and powered, the biomass only marginally degraded but the mind inside had gone crazy first, then into stupor and finally just flickered out. A tiny programming mistake in the navigational system could turn the most powerful and advanced technology ever built into an eternal prison for the mind. Which is why capsules nowadays have a mechanical lever installed that can be pulled by the biomass itself, instantly opening the communication relay to a cloning vat and venting the pod to the vacuum of space.

Suicide with the hope of revival beats the infinite isolation of the mind.

His feet touched the ground. He did not remember sitting up, so this it how it feels to stand. The new nanites in his skin amplified the sensory perception of touch and he could clearly resolve tiny cracks and elevations in the metallic floor as if they were pebbles. It hurt. But without this massive boost in sensory perception, he would not be able to deal with the incoming data from every part of the spaceship and act accordingly. He just had to learn which inputs changed and what it meant, something the upcoming training would give him plenty of time to do.

The image in the mirror looked at him astonished. He had not changed. He somehow had imagined himself to be bigger now, more powerful, stand straighter, like the models on the clinic’s brochures. Be dressed in the silly warrior outfit that cost more Aurum than the GDP of entire planets. But he just looked like himself stark naked, on the short side for his tribe with blackened eyes from the pressure pads that had programmed the nanites through his optical nerve. He did not look like the most powerful being in the new Universe and a glance on the nameless Amarrian nurses showed that he was not the only one thinking this. They pursed their lips in their arrogant ways that had become so familiar to him as he lived on of their stations. He was not a chosen one, not furniture or a slave but something in between human and animal that they despised.

His sister appeared behind him in the mirror. She handed him his old gown and his new tactile sensitivity recognized the material, each seam, each spec of lint, dirt or loose thread. He wrapped himself and turned around, straightening his back and looking at the doctor who fussed with some device in the corner. Their eyes met. The doctor started the pursing of the lips but changed his mind and bowed. After all, he knew the doctor’s name. He could find out where his children went to school and put a missile through their window. Wiping out a few hundred civilians dents a capsuleer’s standing just enough for Concord to notice but not enough to really matter. Respect and fear. Something else he would have to get used to.

His augmented heart worked on about half of the speed as before the operation, he was conscious of the change in the internal rhythm. He had lived 23 years with that heartbeat and now it changed entirely. But it was for the better, it worked more efficiently and would respond to surges in adrenaline in more measured ways. Some early capsuleers had died from cardiac arrest caused by sensory overload during a battle. The enterprising ones then used a stick-on defibrillator before drowning themselves in the goo but those tended to detach or misfire with often tragic consequences such as inadvertently warping the ship into a star. Eventually someone in Caldari space came up with the plan to flush a special breed of nanites into the coronaries that control the heart better than the body could. Caldari technology would keep him alive on his quest.

The universe loves irony.

Walking out, his sister recovered his shoes and slipping them on denied him the sensation of the floor. He’d buy a special suit to wear in the pod, a skin hugging number replete with millions of sensors and haptic feedback mechanisms. But that was for later. His sister guided him through the door and out of the medical center.

A familiar smell greeted him – the same eye-watering stench as he had known from the refugee quarters on that cursed Amarr station. An old Minmatar slave on his hands and knees scrubbed the floor. His uniform was non-descript, some quasi military sack of cloth, the collar showed the yellow flashing light indicating his status: Allowed to roam – Not a threat. While some progressive parts of Amarr started to make do without slaves, this side of the universe apparently adhered to the old traditions. But slaves used to be more numerous and the old man only was allowed to live because replacements were hard to find. He was unlikely to run, sabotage or commit suicide. His entire family probably served on the station. He stepped in front of the slave. His sister with her third sense had foreseen this, pivoted around and assured herself that nobody else was watching. He bent down to the slave and touched his shoulder. “look up” he said. I’ll come back for you and your family one day”. The slave did not change his posture but he spoke clearly and in the typical Minmatar cadence: “You are not the first who said this to me in the two years I have served on this station. None have come back. You will forget the reason why you gained this power, you will forget your family, your race, your friends. The power you will gain will corrupt you. Please do us all a favor and do not speak of coming back. When you come back, this station will be nothing but a spec in your target sights”.

He turned and walked away in tears, knowing he was right and hoping he had the strength to prove the slave wrong.

Chapter 2 - The Departure. Recovery and thoughts

His metamorphosis had taken place deep in Amarr space. Getting there had been frightening and only the special visa had prevented detention, death or slavery on the way. Orv was not the only Gallentean in the passenger ship but certainly the only without government or business purpose. None disembarked at the medical station in Emrayur.

ID check. Yet again. Armed guards led Orv to his bunk in the detention wing, evidently the station was not prepared to accommodate Gallente pilots in the medical facility at all and this prison cell would have to do. As a nod to his special status, someone had kindly removed the shackles from wall and scrubbed the floor drain clean of bodily fluids. Apparently, a billion ISK go a long way to create a warm welcome.

The medical tests prior the surgery took days and were as thorough as the ones he had gone through in the academy before he set out on this trip. Of course the Amarr doctors would not believe the test results that their heathen colleagues had generated and in addition, they rarely had living Gallente specimens to prod and poke. A score of giggling medical interns were allowed to subject him to battery of unnecessary and degrading examinations. He was evidently the first enemy they had seen outside the holoreels and he made a point to be patient, polite and even cheerful throughout this ordeal, some of these interns could well end up on some battleship caring for Gallente casualties. In addition, his mission was to destroy one man, not an entire race.

Once, his sense of humor was tested when they made him sign his last will before the procedure. A sensible precaution but the questions made him laugh, the forms were designed for a religious Amarr, not an agnostic Gallente. Whether Orvalone Signoret wanted his ashes to be dedicated to the Empress and fired into the nearby sun or sent by courier to his home? He chose the Empress / Sun combination because it was much cheaper and besides, he had no home address.

And the evening before the operation, he was allowed to meet his sister Lydie – in his cell under the watchful guard of unblinking cameras in the walls. Of course he knew that she was on the station, that was the hole point of doing it here and not in Gallente space. But he had not seen her in weeks and when she finally walked into his cell, he could not contain his bottled-up emotions any longer and fell apart in tears. Lydie sat and took his head on her lap and stroked his bristly hair while he sobbed.

Her dry eyes stared down the watchers on the other side of the the camera.

After the procedure, Lydie walked Orv back to his cell. His body did not know what and where to heal next and simply shut him down. In vivid dreams, he was a boy again at home, listening to his dad’s tales when he had returned from some far flung journey amongst the stars. His father had been a engineering officer and crewed more starships and had seen more solar system than most capsuleers. His tales grew more and more fantastic although he never let on when he crossed the threshold from truth to fiction. Like when he single-handedly rescued a Damsel in Distress from a pleasure-hub single. To his mother’s chagrin, his dad told the stories with so many details as if he actually had been inside the structure, not just outside in the Minmatar Battleship keeping the shields charged. He heard himself asking “Dad, what is a pleasure-hub?”, which resulted in his mum giggling and blushing.

Sometimes, he woke fully aware where he was but could still hear the voices of his parents in his head. Then he realized that they were dead and he relived the surprise, the anguish, the feeling of abandonment, the guilt and last, the rage and lust for vengeance.

The next night, Orv came around finally and his body felt like it had been through a particularly hard combat session with his sister. Lydie was half his weight but twice his speed and could dance around him without impunity, her fluid kicks coming out of nowhere and her tiny fists striking like ballpen hammers with surgical precision. He was no match for her and they both knew it, but he never declined a session, never backed down, always got up. Orv expressed his love in these fights with an almost inhuman stamina and Lydie hers by not showing any mercy. He learned how to take the worst pain and she learned how to inflict it. Together, they would conquer the universe or so they made themselves believe.

And so Orv recovered from the surgery much better than the nurses had thought. He observed a glimpse of admiration in their eyes when they came change the dressings around the connectors in his neck. This is where would jack in the main communication link, effectively joining his nervous system with that of the ship he was flying. All output was going via that line and the conscious decisions as well. So he could think the ship into doing something. Unfortunately, combat situations did not allow for this slow method of decision making and this is where his new pod-suit came in. Bright-blue and made of a stretchy biomaterial it literally consisted of electrodes and stimulators. The electrodes read his status and responded to subtle movements, changes in temperature, conductivity and so on. The stimulators had the opposite job, they would activate based on the urgency of the the issue in their sector of the ship. So for example, small meteorite scratching the shield would induce a slight itch in his hand. A full blown hit of enemy laser fire into the structure would feel like a flaming fist penetrating into his stomach. Pain was the body’s normal way to rank possible decisions. The engineers who designed the system simply jacked into the firmware of his biomass.

On his last night on the station, Lydie left to fetch more water and never came back. Her owners had allowed her to stay with him since they had fronted the ISK for his transformation and wanted to see their investment pay off. Beyond that, they needed to make sure that she doesn’t get any ideas to bust out of the station and run away with him. Her collar had turned on the nasty flashing-red light indicating that it was charged with enough raw electrical power to kill her and anyone near her if she decided to leave her set perimeter. The surge would be strong enough to sever her neck cleanly and cauterize the wound, so not to make too much of a mess. Amarr love neatness.

And so, instead of a long good-bye, she simply walked out. Orv knew her well enough that he anticipated the move and said all the things he needed to say before she left. Saying goodbye to your last relative is hard enough. Saying it fully knowing that it may well be the last time in your life is worse. Doing all of this in front of a camera with the enemy watching was the ultimate torture and humiliation.

In the morning, heavily-armed security officers walked him to his transport. Overkill, he thought, I can barely walk and certainly not take over this station with my bare hands.

Although the thought had crossed his mind.

Chapter 3 - Iteron. Orv has a flashback to the day that changes his life

To the great relief of the security guards, Orv boarded the old but well maintained Iteron III cargo hauler. Like so many of its class it had been converted to carry up to 200 passengers in a tight forward compartment and although creature comforts were not its high point, it served well enough on long routes across New Eden. Sure, a capsuleer could just set the destination, activate the autopilot and fall asleep but haulers like followed planned routes with dozens of stop-overs. They carried the bulk of New Eden’s goods and people.

He was greeted by a cheerful but scared Gallente crewman, evidently, this was his first big journey and the experience of docking at a quasi-military facility deep in enemy space was the stuff action holoreels were made from. After a few hundred stations this enthusiasm would surely abate. On the other hand, having a Gallente capsuleer on board in this region would mark them as a target for any enterprising enemy. After all, Orv was not going to be plugged into his pod and would die as easily as any man. “Ending” him permanently would earn someone substantial bragging rights, the couple of hundred civilians he would take with him would not matter. Orv knew all of this and was convinced that his presence had been advertised to every police and customs office on the way in hope of a smooth passage. It was logical but ill advised. Not everyone working for Concord had severed all ties to their own race and corruption was always a problem in large organizations. He should have gone with his original plan and change ships and ID frequently but he would have to be traveling for weeks rather than days.

The crewman issued the mandatory survival suits to the passengers and noticed that Orv carried his own, a very expensive, military model, hardly used. Haulers of this class have virtually no armor and a rogue asteroid or missile would cut through the ship like a knife through butter. In that case, the suit would detect the drop in cabin pressure and fire explosive charges around the neck, encasing the head of the bearer in a thin plastic hood. The cheap on-board suits stored only a few minutes worth of air and heat and needed to be plugged into a universal jack of which there are many in the passenger cabin. If they worked at all. Orv’s personal suit however had its own isotope heater and compressed air for several hours. Only the very paranoid, ex military with post-traumatic stress disorder and those with first-hand experience of space disaster carried their own. The crewman pondered to which of class his new passenger counted.

Orv dozed off while the loading continued and the hauler’s capacitor charged. The hissing of the outer-hatch’s air-seals and triggered a surge of memories to rise up slowly and unstoppable, like fat bubbles in pod goo. He could have suppressed them, he was good at it after years of practice but he realized that one day he would have to confront his memories – if nothing but to justify the suffering he imposed on himself and on his sister. While his body now stared absentmindedly out of his porthole, his mind relived that fateful day 8 years ago.

He had just turned 15 and was on his way to the University of Caille to accept a “Genius Scholarship” in cybernetics. He would be the youngest post-graduate student there ever and the scholarship would restore the honor and dignity of his family who had lost everything and lived in cramped refugee quarters, fleeing from system to system ahead of the frontline of yet another capsuleer war. They had lived in nullsec, his father part of a capital ship construction crew, building carriers and dreadnoughts for capsuleers. When the invasion came, they jumped onto whatever could carry them and fled across nullsec for nearly a whole year. Orv himself had burrowed into cybernetics textbooks more to escape reality than to study. And when the talent scout showed up, he aced the tests with ease. He never wanted to be an academic. He wanted to travel the stars like his dad, an engineer, maybe even a navigator. But the scholarship would change all of that. He simply could not back out.

The university required a parent to enroll him in person and so his father’s employer allowed him extraordinary (and unpaid) leave. He managed to play his old contacts for two seats in the cargo compartment of a gigantic Iteron V and spent the first 2 hours of the flight staring at a packaged Amarr shuttle on its skid. Then his father had a quiet word with the crew and Orv was invited to ride out the rest of the journey on the bridge, clamped into a jump-seat behind the navigator. It was ostensibly to honor his scholarship and Orv absorbed a crash course in star travel the amused bridge crew gave him. Much later would he learn the real reason why his father wanted him to travel on the bridge. It was the compartment with the most armor.

The first 12 jumps across very hostile territory had gone surprisingly smoothly thanks to the experienced crew and two Covert Ops frigates jumping ahead and scouting for activity. Three times, they had reported “hot” gates and the hauler kept jumping ceaselessly from one safespot to another to thwart detection and attack. Although stressful to the crew, it was routine. All knew that someday their luck would run out but not on this trip. Never on this trip.

Finally they reached the last null sec gate leading them back into Concord space, one more jump and they would be reasonably safe. Their destination was still low security, meaning anyone could attack them but it was sparsely populated, the single outpost in that system was their last dock for the night and everyone needed sleep. The scouts went ahead and gave the “all clear” to the large cargo ship. Their crew aligned and warped right top of the gate initiating the jump as soon as they could. The massive jump system propelled them into their final system and the Iteron came to a slow stop, still cloaked from the warp. By now Orv understood the sequence of events and could anticipate the pilot’s action. He aligned the heavy ship towards their station and readied to initiate warp when the navigator in front of Orv jerked and reported the sighting of eight new ships within their d-scan range. He read the names and the corporation aloud – a wormhole outfit which explained how they appeared so suddenly. A tense second later, the small fleet landed almost on top them. Amongst them two battle cruisers, Amarr Harbingers with enormous firepower and very short reaction time. They could lock down the huge and slow Iteron almost instantly and kill it’s warp drive if they were geared for it. These ships were all piloted by capsuleers and hence anything was a target worth destroying. But the hauler had another 10 seconds of cloak left and was only 24 degrees off from their target. If they could just line up and fire the afterburner while initiating warp, they might still surprise the the capsuleers and warp off before they were able to react. Orv heard himself already telling this adventure to his dad who sat in the cargo hold, clueless about the events outside. But Orv also did not quite see the danger for what it was. He had been lulled into a feeling of safety by the experienced crew, their banter and war stories and – when the situation required – their focused professionalism.

The eight combat ships approached the gate oblivious to the cloaked hauler amongst in their mids. They were in jump range. And then they stopped, only a Helios went through the gate, a scout ship to check out if the other side was hot. The remaining seven lazily orbited the gate.

Time had run out. The Iteron slowly decloaked, first, the structure became visible and turned opaque and finally, the ship emerged from the stars. Now that the game was up, the pilot issued a stream of orders that were crisply confirmed by the crew. One of the commands started the massive but still undersized afterburner and Orv was almost deafened by the howl of the system as it pumped raw energy into the turbines. It takes a lot to accelerate an Iteron V and it would take many seconds before the ship markedly gained speed. The navigator furiously called in the local coms channel, repeating their ship ID and that they carried nothing of value. The combat pilots out there would not care if hundreds of civilians died but might want to save munitions if all they would get was worthless scrap metal. It was a gamble, and may have paid out with other capsuleers but evidently not with these. Instantly, one of the Harbingers peeled out of formation and started targeting them. The bridge crew instinctively hunched when the shrill beep-beep-beep flowed through the speakers, then stopped. The Harbinger had locked the hauler down within seconds and the last remaining question about the intent of the capsuleer fleet was answered when their warp drive was stalled by force of the battlecruiser’s scramming system. They were hanging dead in space with little forward velocity and no means of escape. The co-pilot tripped a red switch and the “abandon-ship” alarm sounded through the hull. This would be the first sign of trouble his father and the rest of the passengers heard and it came just before the first salvo hit amidships. Orv had stared out of the bridge window at the small spec of light 35km away, moving quickly starboard when the battlecruiser opened fire and the Iteron’s flimsy shields evaporated in a spectacular display of yellow and blue light. Klaxxons sounded and the pilot tried to gain some transversal velocity, more out of reflex than necessity, an Iteron V does not outrun an Harbinger. But sitting there helplessly was worse than doing something useless and so, everyone was intensely busy. Everyone but Orv who realized that he was almost 100m away from his father. The next salvo hit deep into the armor and Orv saw pieces of it being flung into space and then congealing in front of the window. He stood, and fell more than climbed down the stairs to the passenger compartment.

The passengers screamed in many languages, struggled in their belts trying to move away. To where, Orv asked himself. But he too had the urge to move, do something, anything just not to stand and wait for the next laser to burn him alive. He started to run down the central isle of the hauler behind the crew who aimed for the lifepod exits in the midsection of the ship. These were lashed to the outside of the hauler and would float free when tripped by the crew. And that was exactly the section where the next salvo of the laser batteries hit, literally melting the lifepods and burning deep into the armor of the hauler. Acrid smoke started to pour through the ventilation, the structure was damaged already. The next salvo would finish them off. Orv sprinted past the crew towards the aft section of the ship. The bulkhead to the cargo hold had failed to close. Some passengers used the cycling time of the enemy’s weapon systems to paw for their survival suits’ umbilical and with wide and panicked eyes looked for the jacks to plug themselves in when the lasers finally burned through structure. The hit was in the extreme rear of the passenger cabin, right in front of the bulkhead and the intense light bored through the compartment wall from starboard, incinerated several rows of passengers and ignited the air around it into a roiling yellow plasma before it melted its way through the port side. Orv came to a skidding halt about 10 rows away and shielded his eyes from the granular light. Just for a moment, he admired the beauty of this horizontal column, the tongues of fire leaping away from it. Then it just disappeared. Air rushed out of the holes and Orv’s survival suit triggered it’s hood with a sharp report.

Everything went quiet as the air escaped and with it the ability to transmit sound. Orv felt the Iteron buck under his feet. The afterburner was still active in the engine rooms aft, pushing hard at the mass of the ship. But the structure had collapsed and would not take the massive force trying to accelerate it. Orv started to ran aft again and lifted off. The gravity field had ceased and he propelled himself by kicking off the passenger seats. Most passengers had their hood on like Orv and were panicked but seemed safe for the moment. For others, the suits had failed and the vacuum and intense cold of space had burned their faces to black masks, boiled their eyes and lungs. Some were still alive and jerked with spasms, their faces frozen into an inaudible scream. A Gallente woman tried to pinch a leak in her daughter’s suit that was bleeding air. Orv caught the girl’s eye staring at him not understanding, not knowing and yet full of terror. He half sprinted, half floated in the dying gravity field towards the bulkhead where he could already see the wing of the packaged shuttle when the lasers hit again, this time behind him, closer to the bridge. He did not look around but the light suddenly changed, cold glaring sunlight poured into the hauler and illuminated the shuttle in front of him. A tear in the floor began to widen. The Iteron was falling apart. Orv did not think, reflect or weigh his options. All he could think about was his father. If he found him, all would be good. His father survived literally hundreds of attacks and and surely could work a way out. Orv jumped over the tear at the last second. The aft section of the ship pushed the passenger compartment aside as they ripped on each other. He found himself in the cargo hold when the next salvo hit the remains of the passenger cabin. It crumpled and melted into a congealed mass of metal, wires, plastic and human flesh.

Orv spotted his father hovering above the packaged shuttle. He was tearing at the tarp that had covered it, revealing its stubby wings and domed canopy. He was alive. They would live. Orv propelled himself towards the shuttle, his father turned and eyes grew wide recognizing his son. He caught Orv with his left arm in a hug and held on to the shuttle with his right arm. Tears welled up in Orv, he had found his father all would be good, when he felt himself pushed backwards. His father’s face was tense and twisted by pain and determination. He motioned towards the shuttle open cockpit. Orv looked closer and saw what his father was pointing at, a single universal jack for power, air and heat. Their supply in their suits would not last for more than a few minutes. Orv looked around. All spaceships have power jacks for these emergencies in the passenger compartment and on the bridge. But not in the cargo hold where – ordinarily – nobody would allowed. His father had understood this and hoped his son was safe in the cockpit. For himself, he had identified the packaged shuttle as his only chance. Orv’s confused brain almost understood the implication when the air on his suit ran out. These cheap survival suits gave no warning. The faster you breathe, the faster they run out. And Orv had been hyperventilating.

Holoreels made suffocation look almost like a peaceful fading-out. The reality that Orv experienced was very different. His breathing was getting harder and harder until the lung spasmed. He was fully conscious when blinding headaches and involuntary tremors signaled his end. His vision turned black and white, narrowed to a tiny tunnel. His world had shrunk to naked panic and terror, forgotten was his father, forgotten was his family, the hauler and why he was here. He even forgot about himself in this last struggle to live. He had already unlatched the umbilical from its pouch, a 2 meter long finger-thick armored hose and now tried plug himself into the shuttle’s connector. His arms trembled badly and he failed again and again. Finally, he lost control over his shaking hand and knew he would not make the connection when he saw his father’s hand gripping his wrist and ramming the connector home. Orv was rewarded with an instantaneous rush of air into his suit. The air soon warmed as the isotope reactor came online and Orv felt as if an immense weight had been lifted from his chest. Nausea hit him, cold sweat and the urge to urinate all at once but all he could think about was that he was going to make it. Orv started to breathe. He could feel his heartbeat slowing. They were going to make it. He had known it all along.

Carefully, Orv pivoted around looking for his father. He was not there anymore but floated by the forward bulkhead that, now that the passenger compartment had gone, formed an open door to infinite space. His father turned, raised his arm, barely controlling the tremors, waving goodbye to his only son. Then he jumped into the light of his beloved stars.

Orv broke down in tears, uncontrollable shaking and sobbing. He screamed knowing nobody could hear him, he pounded the shuttle’s canopy and more than once did he grab the connector of the umbilical wanting to end it all. But every time he did, he saw his father’s hand steadying his wrist. He could not undo what his father had died for and so he stayed connected to the shuttle, tethered to this machine inside a wreck. His breathing slowed, his eyes dried up and the warm air defogged his visor. He could see, he could act, he was alive. His father wanted him to live, save his mother and sister and live his life. He had a duty now to get out of this wreck and into safety. Orv recalled the last seconds on the bridge. The pilot desperately trying to steer the hauler to safety. The red flashing of the square on the navigator’s computer showing that this Amarr battlecruiser had opened fire. The name next to the Icon on the same display. He remembered the name of the pilot who destroyed the hauler, killed the crew and passengers and his father.

He would find that capsuleer and destroy him.

Chapter 4 - Drowning. Orv becomes a capsuleer.

Orv woke up when the Iteron made contact with the docking braces at The Center for Advanced Studies in Cestuvaert. Disoriented, he looked out his porthole and found himself mesmerized by the view: a cratered moon casting the Gallente station into pale light. The station may have been dirty, scratched by countless micrometeorites and scorched by the occasional solar flare but its rounded features and elegant curves told him that he finally had arrived. He felt relieved, at ease and cheered by the bustling in the cargo hauler’s passenger aisle. A few Gallente Incaris were getting up, stretched their legs and grinned broadly. They had returned home. “Home” was not a word Orv had used in a long time but their happiness infected him too and he found himself smiling for the first time in years. He got up, loosened his survival suit and shouldered his tiny bag.

He smiled until he met the Hazmat team that had been sent to escort him to the medical station. Yes, he had undergone massive surgery and nannite injections in the station of a sworn enemy. Yes, there are known nanites that could be “infectious” but this show of containment had come a little late. After all, he spent several days in a tin can with 200 other passengers and crew breathing recycled air, docking several times each day to let passengers off the ship. What nefarious things the Amarr may have infected him with would now be spread over half the galaxy. A little late for containment maybe? But of course, there was no arguing with military orders – there never was.

Orv sighed and let them connect his survival suit with their rolling air supply and closed his hood. They led the way, filled with importance of their duty, pride of protect their home from imaginary threats and hope that their superiors and relatives would watch them in awe on the station news feed. They led Orv to the medical station where he would likely spent the next few days being prodded by wide-eyed interns.

They didn’t find anything. Of course. They tested his body for tracking or exploding devices, exposed him to every imaging technology possible until Orv put a stop to it. The radiation would eventually harm the neural nanites that cost 1 bn ISK and his sister’s freedom, so he could not have some nurse accidentally nuke them whilst she was painting her nails. He called for the chief of the medical station who looked at his chart and ranted that Orv was the sloppiest capsuleer job he had ever seen and that he would likely burn his brain to a crisp if he had the temerity to jack himself into a shuttle. He rambled on about Amarr doctors in general, comparing them to creatures so low on the evolutionary ladder that Orv imagined them with gills and pseudopods sticking out of their lab coats. Orv had to laugh out at that image but the doctor found nothing amusing about it and discharged him on the spot. Dressed still in his hospital gown, Orv stood in the main artery corridor of the bustling station. A tame slaver hound wearing a pink bow-tie playing with a fluffy baby bunny would have attracted less attention.

Indignities aside, Orv found his quarters in the capsuleer training wing of the station, was given a bunk and an introduction to the training course. Non-capsuleers always assumed that training involved nothing but buying a skill book and uploading it into your head. Voila, you could fly a carrier and swat away millions of people. Not quite. Training consisted of countless hours inside a stationary pod trying to control the myriad of ship subsystems with his own nervous system. Sure, the hardware for that was injected with the skill book but learning how to operate it was a completely different manner. And the skills build on top of each other, so he had to start with the lowliest of all frigates, armed with a civilian gun (spitball, they called it) and a mining laser that had less power output than a modern electric toothbrush. His ship would be crewed by a group of “seasoned (i.e., nearly retired) engineers who had been serving this ship class for so long that they knew all the possible ways a capsuleer could screw up. They had rigged all ship controls into their own home-built survival pods and would eject at the first sight of danger. Basically, save of a Doomsday Device, nothing could harm them there and they expected nothing from Orv other than that he would not fly them into the sun. A scenario for which they had a well-practiced escape plan.

But training first. Orv reported to the the bridge of the training wing and was issued his brand new immersion suit. It was the best money could buy and while he was not quite sure where it came from, he slipped into it without asking questions. The suit sensed his body’s contours and sucked itself so close to the skin that it almost became one with it. It glistened black and looked wet like an oil slick but was dry to touch no matter how much he would perspire. The suit would jack itself into his neuronal network and translate his body’s motion into commands and feed back electronic input to his skin and nerves.

A young technician guided him to the training capsule and Orv could spot a large number of operators and trainers behind the thick glass watching him intently. Presumably drowning yourself for the first time makes for a good spectacle. Or they wanted to know if the Amarrian nanites worked with the Gallente electronics system. If they didn’t they would have to dispose of a body and fill out reports, nothing they looked forward to.

The hatch of the capsule was open and Orv climbed into the cavern. The technician suppressed a smirk and closed the hatch after pointing out that this one did not have the escape handle that real capsules had, presumably every new recruit would pull it in panic and flood the room with expensive pod goo – easier to just let them thrash in terror for a bit than to mop the liquid up.

When the hatch closed, literally all noise from the outside vanished. Orv was by himself – until he plugged the pod’s umbilical cable into the jack at the base of his brain. Then he would be in direct communication with the operators behind the glass who would put him into a simulated spaceship and monitor his vital signs.

The sensation of sticking a cable into his brain stem turned out to be not exciting at all. After all, it was designed to be seamless but now could hear the operators as if they stood next to him. He could see what they wanted him to see by projecting it from the computer interface into his optic nerve. They could sense his vital signs, spot the smallest of his motions and have the suit counteract it. This way, Orv could – in theory – haptically manipulate simulated switches and such but that of course was no way to drive a multi-billion spaceship. Eventually, he would “feel” and control the spaceship as if it was an extension of his body. But for now, it was just a training operator telling him that they would flood the capsule with podgoo and if he panicked, too bad. There was a slight disappointment in the operator’s voice as if he really had hoped for a major malfunction of the Amarr-Gallente interface with spectacular results, short wiring, seizures and exploding eyeballs that he could tell his children about over dinner. But none of that sort. It just worked. How boring.

A mechanical clunk reverberated through the capsule, a valve opened and Orv felt the fluid enter the pod near his feet. Air escaped through tight slits above his face and he tried to steady his breath. He had anticipated this moment for years, had known about it, heard stories about it and of course had been exposed to it before during his surgery – but then he had been anesthetized. He knew his body would take it – they had tested his larygnospasm which would prevent him from inhale the liquid. But he lacked that spasm – they were happy to tell him – allowing him to drown properly and not just black out. It was important that the entire lung filled with liquid or he could get embolisms when pulling high G’s. The liquid also had a much higher capacity to carry oxygen than air and through convection he would not even have to breathe. But he would have to learn to flood his lungs with this stuff first.

The liquid crept up on his sides and between his legs. He assumed that the operators ran it as slowly as possible to prolong the panic but he had no evidence for that. Finally, it reached the sides of his face, rolled over his mouth, eyes and nose and entered his nostrils. He had to fight the urge to lift his head above the surface where there still was air. Orv was determined to deal with it right here, opened his mouth and inhaled sharply. He was rewarded with a massive coughing fit that spasmed his body and he violently jerked his head into the ceiling of the pod. But there was no pain, a cushion had been installed there for that purpose – blood contaminates the expensive podgoo. Orv was shaken with involuntary retching and coughing fits while the capsule filled at constant rate. He panicked. He needed to get out. His vision shrank to a tunnel and he screamed for help to the entertainment of the assembled operators outside. The podgoo rose to his shoulders now, his ears and he pressed his mouth against the vents, wishing for a stream of air. It didn’t come. The liquid rose past his eyes through the vents and he held his breath while sinking back down to the base of the pod. Immersed in liquid, cut off from the outside world, he realized that this would be how he would die some day. Alone, in sheer terror and without hope.

Orv thought of his sister and inhaled deeply.

Chapter 5 – First Blood. Taking a Velator out for the first time.

He didn’t drown of course, it was technically impossible. Capsuleers panic and thrash occasionally but eventually they all get used to it – in fact, many preferred to stay in their warm, safe, nourishing womb and experience the world as projection to their conscience rather than stepping into the cold and harsh world of meat and metal.

Spending time in the simulator, Orv acquired knowledge on space ship command and was getting better and better at controlling a his simulated frigate when he was rather suddenly told that he had graduated, he was to check out of his temporary quarters and pick up his new Velator-class frigate.

No ceremony, no handshake from “The Dean”, no speech from a local dignitary, nothing. The academy was run by non-capsuleers with strong distrust of their own students – the quicker they got out, the safer everyone felt.

Freedom. Choose your path, decide your destiny. Live the life you want to have – forever. Orv had never thought about this very moment but when it struck him, it struck him hard. He was free. He could go with his ship wherever he wanted, do what he wanted and shoot who he wanted. He had nothing to lose at this point and all to gain. If he abandoned his sister, nobody would judge him.

Orv sat down in the mess hall and stared out of windows at the mighty gas planet they orbited. Its colors shifted depending on the light and thick glass distorted the view so that it looked closer. Orv wanted to reach out and touch it and realized that now, in command of his own spaceship, he could.

The next day, he took the padded elevator from the plush capsuleer quarters down to the Hangar where his new ship and its three man crew would be waiting for him. He was greeted by the deafening cacophony of a working shipyard and the sight of hundreds of engineers crawling over the largest fleet of frigates anyone had ever built. All Velator class ships were built here and exported across all stations of New Eden. If a Gallente capsuleer lost his ship somehow, all he had to do was do dock up at any friendly station and he would be issued a new one. Consequently, thousands were needed every month and they were all built right here.

The sight of this massive operation brought reality back into Orv’s vision. He had been secluded in the capsuleer academy, immersed in his studies and isolated from the real world of meat and steel. Capsuleers were not supposed to mix with mortals, the difference that immortality gave them made them effectively a new species. And while capsuleers showered their crew with ISK to buy their loyalty, they were all afraid of the day when the shipyards would be on strike and their immortality could not buy them their next meal. The mortals on the other hand knew that they were seen by capsuleers as much as consumables as their ammunition or their ships. There was never a reason to trust a capsuleer and they showed it by polite indifference to them but excellence to the ship’s maintenance.

And there she was.

A Velator Class frigate with a couple of older guys in beige suits doing last minute systems diagnostics. Orv stepped into the main artery of the shipyard and was nearly run over by cart carrying combat drones, small, automated craft that could be ejected from the frigates and steered towards their targets. They seemed sleek, polished and deadly but Orv had no time to study them, his crew noticed his appearance and turned towards him.

Orv was determined to have a different connection to his crew than other capsuleers. In them, he saw his father who had never lost his passion for space, his lust for adventure and his love for engineering. The transformation from mortal to capsuleer had not changed him in his feelings – if anything, it had made him more sensitive – and Orv keenly wished nothing but trust with his crew.

He approached his ship and the two crewmen with a tight smile. “Morning sir”, the shorter of the two engineers said simply. “Ready to take her out?”. Up in the office, Orv had demanded the crew manifesto with names in addition to titles. This had raised a few eyebrows but Orv knew now who he was flying with. The manifesto had come with grainy photos. “Yes, Mr. Lavoisier, lets take her for a spin”.The crewman’s eyes widened slightly. New capsuleers could be unpredictable and crewmen learn to fear a prepared and determined capsuleer more than a hapless day-sailor. Casual pilots will blow up the ship but do it where the crew can easily escape. Serious pilots have something to prove and could get a crew into real trouble. Orv was serious.

The second crew man stood silent but gestured towards the short gangway. Orv ducked inside and in the narrow bulkhead ran into his third crew member, a short, lithe Minmatar woman with bright green eyes fixed on Orv like a cat staring at a mouse. Orv mumbled something, squeezed past and physically felt her eyes burn holes into his back.

He entered the comparatively large cargo bay and turned around. His crew had followed him.

Orv cleared his throat: “We are going out today to make some ISK. We will mine a few Velspar asteroids and bring the ore back here for refining. We will not shoot unless in self defense and then only to secure our retreat. We may leave the system and roam for safer and richer asteroids but we will stay in Gallente-controlled high-security space. Any questions”? And when none came, he added: “I know what you are thinking. I have my reasons to dislike capsuleers and I just wanted to tell you that I will try to earn your trust.”

He turned around, walked down the narrow corridors and found the cockpit cramped with nothing but a pod on its ejection skid. He took his clothes off, climbed into the pod, closed the hatch and flooded it with goo. Orv had practiced this so many times by now that the sensation of drowning was surpassed by his fear of disappointing his crew.

The sensation of plugging his brain into a living, breathing ship was quite different from the simulator. There were imperfections with every engineered system and Orv felt each as if it was part of his body. He instinctively knew the airlock was still open but the crew was already strapped into their make-shift pods.With a thought, he closed the lock and over-pressured the ship checking for leaks.He felt self-conscious, as if he was playing for an audience, his crew was watching every one of his moves.

Orv opened the communication relay and request permission to undock. His voice signature was confirmed by flight control, his frigate was pushed onto onto a rail and accelerated rapidly down towards the main undock shoot. Where the rail ended, Orv initiated the Velator’s tiny engine and propelled himself into the void. The view of the sheer fall below him made him want to hug the station wall for comfort but the steering was still locked to him. He tried to steady himself.

This was the time he had been working for so long. He was in charge of his own craft and no matter how small and pathetic it was, this little frigate represented a huge step towards his revenge and his sister’s freedom.

When the station’s tractor beams let go of his little hull, Orv accelerated straight ahead, keeping the curved Gallente Station astern. He gently nudged the side thrusters, bending his path and he was rewarded with a very nimble response of his craft. The crew was at work computing ranges and threat levels of nearby ships and generally making sure they would not run into anything. Orv turned on his neocom and projected map features of the world around him into his virtual view. He selected a random asteroid belt and initiated warp.

He had been on many ships before during warp so the sensation was not new to him. But he knew the tremendous danger that is involved with this maneuver and in the past, he had always trusted the pilot and his navigator not to warp the into the sun, embed them into a planet or simply warp into another ship. Now he was the pilot and his while he was technically immortal, warping was the one thing where things could go seriously wrong for his crew.

Orv was so busy being afraid that he did not savor the view – the distorted planets, the long drawn out stars zooming past and only when they landed in safe distance of several Veldspar asteroids, he felt relatively safe. His crew checked in fine, slightly bored and immediately surveyed the field for the best asteroids and possible danger. Orv slightly nudged his craft towards the first large rock that he saw – impressive in size and violently rotating.

He knew that Velspar was quite valuable these days for the tritanium they contain and he locked his targeting system onto the rock while closing range. His crew heated up the mining laser and it was his job now to position his ship close enough to the floating and spinning rock that the laser could be properly focused but keep the ship aligned to somewhere in case there was trouble and he needed to bug out quickly.

At 10km range, Orv could see little dimples in the asteroid and he commanded the laser to initiate its pulse. By New Eden standards, this mining laser was minuscule but in relation to the tiny ship it seemed huge. The hard, focused 450nm beam hit the asteroid and instantly evaporated the rocks within it. The ore “vapor” was transported as plasma back up on the inside of the hollow laser beam, driven by the field the coherent photons exerted when spun wildly around the center of the beam. The plasma would be guided directly into the cargo bay where it cooled and solidified back as dust – containing the valuable minerals within.

Orv had long decided that he would seek his fortune as a miner and not as combat pilot. Mining may appear boring but it was safe and an honorable profession. He also could save up tremendous amounts of ISK and relatively quickly afford one of the enormous Hulk mining exhumers which could strip entire belts within hours.

The first round of ore was in the bay and a computer-estimated price showed that he already mined more ISK than his father would have earned in a month when a sharp warning signal from his crew woke him up.

The green eyed Minmatar crew member had detected three frigates owned and operated by the Serpentis faction. Tiny, nimble and without fear, these crafts slip by the Concord Security force at the gates or they are even built in the system in clandestine bases. They operate in pairs normally but this time they had a third with them and all three changed their course towards him. Orv did not know how to react when their first salvo hit. He had slipped on his attention and the craft had drifted into the asteroid he was mining. Freeing it would cost valuable seconds and the three pirates mercilessly would pound on his ship until it turned into valuable salvage.

His crew targeted the crafts – Orv should have done that seconds ago – and heated up the pathetic civilian gun. Orv realized that everyone waited for his command to open fire but he hesitated. They had not been attacked. Serpentis or not, there were human beings on these little ships that he could only see as fast moving specs 10km away and tiny red crosses on his overview. Maybe they had not seen him? Maybe he could talk them out of the attack? No chance, they saw him, they rapidly closed and had him target locked. Orv saw on his neocom that his crew members were getting ready to eject their own make-shift pods when the first salvo hit his small craft. Orv winced in pain, yes they had trained for this in the simulator but the sharp pain that the enemy fire evokes in his capsule was still surprising.

The entire capsuleer system worked of course in that way. Orv experienced the ship as an extension of his body. So, damage to the ship came across as pain. It was that simple. The more damage the ship took, the more pain Orv felt. And right now, he was being hit with hot needles across the chest, indicating that the three Serpentis were well into his shields. Orv opened fire. He hoped that he would scare them away but inside he knew this was not possible. He tried to maneuver the ship away from the rock and kept firing at one one of the pirates. His neocom told him that his shots were having some effect but his shields were failing fast. He had to get away from the asteroid and gain transversal speed to mitigate the damage of the enemy frigates. He achieved the goal and sped to ~230m/s when his shield gave and the enemy salvos now landed in his armor eliciting a feeling as if was punched into the stomach with a red-hot iron rod. But his transversal was now good enough to mitigate at least some of the damage and he had totally forgotten that he was now free to escape. The combination of adrenaline rushing through his body and the pain exerted by the enemy rounds caused a rush in Orv that he had never experienced. He literally saw “red” and closed the range to the hostile pilots.

Setting a tight orbit of 1000m, his spitball gun was tracking decently whereas the Serpentis weapons were rather poor and their rounds kept missing. The first pirate frigate was near structure and Orv realized that he could live through this if his speed held up. He had forgotten that he was immortal but but he did realize that he was responsible for his crew.

The first pirate ship blew up, 2km away and while Orv saw the explosion, his neocom only showed a red cross turning into a yellow triangle. So, thats how the Iteron looked like when the Amarr pilot shot him down in cold blood. Orv could not see any rescue pods escaping, saw no bodies, no signs. Just a yellow triangle and a spec of debris on the background of endless space.

Orv switched targets – well his crew did – and the spitball gun tracked its new victim mercilessly. Orv caught himself trying to have an emotion other than pain or rage but it wouldn’t come. Then the second frigate blew up, blinding him with its explosion. The third followed shortly and Orv’s tight nerves kept scanning for additional targets when his crew spun down the gun and surveyed the damage to his ship.

His armor was badly damaged but nothing that couldn’t be fixed. His crew suggested to steer the ship closer to the wrecks and investigate if they contained anything of value. They had a lot of practice in this and Orv followed their advice and engaged the autonomous crane that pried open the wreck and searched for valuable items. There was a little and Orv decided to take his damaged Velator back to the station for repairs. His crew aligned the beat-up ship towards the station and Orv initiated warp.

In warp, his nerves calmed and he wondered how he did. Why did he not run away as had announced to the crew? Did he kill anyone? Were there women and children now without a father because of him? Was there anyone on these ships who did not want to be there?

Docking was smooth and the slight vane of fire coming from his engines was seen as nothing abnormal. His ship was towed to a repair hangar and Orv climbed out of his pod, retched the goo and dressed. He went downstairs to survey the damage and found the station crew already at work, carts of spare armor plates had arrived next to the gangway and he had the distinct feeling of being in the way.

He turned and walked back into his ship to find the crew. They were busy fixing the mechanical fire control mechanism that had taken damage and looked up when he walked in. “I just wanted to thank you” Orv said. The crewmen were crouched under the consoles and only Mr. Lavoisier spoke up: “good job sir” and initiated a mock-salute.

Orv turned and could not suppress a broad grin on his face.

Chapter 6 – The Dancing Washers. Introducing Lydie

Lydie loved watching her Magic Washers dance. She would put them next to each other on the metal floor and every time it the big banging came, the 3 warm steel rings would dance, touch each other, jump up in joy and sometimes even somersault. After every jump, Lydie would move them a little, find some dirt to angle them on and try to make them jump all at the same time and kiss each other in mid-jump. Mother said that she wasn’t allowed to lie on the floor in the big metal room where everyone had run to when the banging started but dad had allowed it, “you think she will die of germs?” he said to mum and that was that.

She loved her dad. He always had funny stories and made her laugh. And he gave her the three Magic Washers, he said he found them at work, they were special. They would bring luck as long as they danced, he said and she took it very seriously to make them dance as best as she could. She knew her mum washed the clothes of soldiers and engineers, often with blood on it which was yucky – and so these little rings of metal must be very special to be dancing. Magical. So whenever the alarms sounded and everyone rushed to the big steel room, Lydie would grab them tight in her fist, even when mum dressed her into her ugly suit.

Lydie hated that suit. It was orange and too big. Orv used to wear it but he grew out of it. It had a big hose on the front that made it difficult to lie on your belly. But she wasn’t allowed to take it out, Dad said so and he was in a suit just like hers, just not orange but bright blue. She wanted a blue suit like his. Mum had a black one and Lydie was scared of it. It reminded her of the man they found all black and shriveled up after they had come out of the steel room before. He had not made it into the shelter in time before the dose closed and the banging started. Dad said the vacuum did had done that to the man. Lydie didn’t know why the vacuum had been so mean to the nice man but Mum’s suit reminded her of him and she was afraid. Orv was in a suit for an adult. He looked funny! It was beige with spots on it like some animal on the holovids and it was way too big for him. He couldn’t run really, but he couldn’t run anyway and Lydie made fun of him. She loved her brother.

And she loved the three Magic Washers. She picked them up and looked at mum. Mum was afraid. Lydie didn’t know why but she wanted mum to smile. Mum always smiled when she danced so Lydie danced and danced with the washers in front of Mum. She would fall into the beat of the massive drums outside that made the room shake and floor move. Lydie became one of the Magic Washers, always in motion, always dancing. She was the fourth, their magic protector and together their dance protected the family. Because Lydie knew that they were in danger. People had said it was “capsuleers” shooting missiles at their station. Lydie didn’t know what that meant but “capsuleers” sounded like a mean word. Not like “Strontium”. People always talked about “Strontium”. How much they had. How much time that would buy them. Lydie wanted to have strontium, she wanted to buy time. Time with her parents and Orv, but Orv was boring, he just sat there with his books. “Stront, Shtront, Thront”, Lydie would sing when she danced. It made her happy. Strontium seemed to be a powerful thing that protected them, like the Magic Washers. It could buy time.

Time ran out a few times. Lydie couldn’t remember how many but she remembers being rushed through the big sliding door into the large corridor full of people in weird suits. Orange, and blue and black (she hated black) and a few beige ones like Orv’s. They would rush out, Mum would grab her by her hand and dad and Orv would carry each a big bag with clothes. Orv would carry another bag with books. They would run to a ship and squeeze into a big room in the ship and stand there for a long time until it all filled out. Then the doors would close and the ship would take off. That’s when Lydie was afraid. She was shorter than everyone and they were squished in so tight she couldn’t talk to anyone. She couldn’t dance either and she needed to go to the toilet. Sometimes she would pee herself but in the her suit, it would all go to her feet and slosh when she moved. She was ashamed. Mum said that she was a very brave girl when that happened and that she shouldn’t be ashamed but Lydie cried anyway.

Once though it was great. The room in the ship was huge and had a high ceiling. There was spacedust everywhere and dad had put her on his shoulders. She could see over the entire room in the ship, there were lots of people, more than she could count. And she could count to two hundred already. Orv taught her. Dad stood by a window in the ship and she could look at out at the station where they had lived for a few weeks. When they came, it was all shiny and new, now it was all charred and full of craters, there was steam coming out of the Hangar Array where she went to school and the Ship Array where her dad worked was upside down. Dad built really big ships there he said, Dreadnaughts. She had seen one, it was huge! She was proud of her dad. But now the big blue bubble she loved so much was gone. It had shimmered and pulsed like a big soap bubble. Mum said it kept bad people away. Now it was gone and bad people would come so they would have to run away again. The bubble had always been there. Now that it was gone, all there was left of her home was some smoking metal against the black sky. There were warships all around and they were shooting missiles at each other, like fireworks. Lydie saw fireworks once. It was beautiful.

She saw a large flash right next to her, a ship like hers had been hit by something. Lots of people spilled out like peas from a bag. Most thrashed around in their funny suits, some didn’t and Lydie thought they were the smart ones – if there was no floor, what good would dancing do? But then she saw that they were not wearing the silly suits either. She saw their faces, black, burned out eyes, crinkled and shriveled as if they were frozen in a scream.

++++

Lydie screamed herself out of the nightmare and sat upright on her mattress. Her heart was racing and she was sweating, she could still smell the fear of the 600 refugees crammed into the Covetor that someone had rigged for the evacuation. She felt her dad’s matted and sweaty hair that she grabbed as she said on his shoulders. She felt the klaxons more than she heard them and she saw her mum fiddling with something on dad’s suit. She saw Orv staring blankly ahead. He was solving mathematical theorems in his head, his way of removing him out this world. Almost every night these nightmares would come to Lydie and they were the reasons why she wasn’t allowed to sleep in the quarters with the others but on a mattress in the cellar. Her screams kept everyone awake and since all had their own war stories, nobody wanted to be reminded. Domestic slaves like her could get plenty of drugs that would numb the pain and make her forget. But Lydie refused to take drugs. In these dreams, at least her family was still together and she could not let go of it. Being awake was worse than any of her nightmares.

Chapter 7 - Happy Birthday, Lydie

Lydie tiredly moved the mop on the diamond plate floor. It was her 16th birthday and nobody knew. Maybe Orv, wherever he was. Certainly not mum. Lydie felt self pity welling up and suppressed it with a powerful swipe of her wet mop. She hated staring at the steel floor with its repetitive pattern, after a while, her vision turned two dimensional. The fat, raised diamonds then became the screen on which she would play the movie of her memories, the harried escapes from station to station when she was a child, dad’s brave good-bye with Orv in tow and mum’s fading interest in this world after dad had died in the attack 6 years ago. Orv made it out of that Iteron wreck somehow, made it to University and now was a grown man trying to send help but dad’s death ended her mum’s world as much as her own death would have. Mum withdrew from Lydie slowly and with no anger to the world. But without dad, mum simply had lost her place, her anchor, her grounding.

Lydie was 10 when it happened and needed comfort at first, mum would provide it but in some mechanical way that was just muscle memory. Soon, Lydie realized that she had lost her mother that day also, it would just take longer for her to fade away. Now, at 16, Lydie had taken care of her for years, dragged her from refugee camp to refugee camp, bargained, stole and hydroponically grew their food, made clothes and saw to both their needs while mum had slowly slipped into a different dimension, one of memories of happy days. Mum would look at Lydie and smile and call her “little dancer” and stroke her hair. Mum would talk about dad’s adventures as engineer as if she had been there and she would talk to him in her low voice all night. Lydie slept next to mum, listening and held her hand for both their comfort but while their hands touched, their minds had drifted apart.

And so Lydie hated the diamond plate as she hated most things in her life. The converted cargo bay of this Amarr industrial station in the middle of nowhere, the pathetic and sniveling Gallente refugees who lamented constantly and with great drama and Lydie hated the capsuleers who sometimes strolled past as if they were animals in a zoo to be gawked at. Lydie’s only friends were a group of near-silent Matari Minmatar. It was not a family per-se but they seemed to share a history that could not be told and Lydie never asked. For that, she was adopted into their circle as a pet which changed her status amongst the refugees measurably. All of a sudden, she and her mum did not have to sleep near the massive ventilation fan anymore and blankets appeared out of nowhere. Lydie learned that hanging around scary people can have an advantage. These Matari taught her their language, protected her from the scammers but above all, let her participate in their nightly martial arts sessions – if you could call it martial art at all. There was nothing artistic about it. They did not intend to impress their opponent with a show of skill and fancy footwork, they wanted him dead on the floor and preferably quietly. As children, Lydie had fought with Orv all the time, imitating the moves of the martial artists in old holovids but with the Matari, Lydie learned the professional way to kill someone. Fast without haste, furious without emotion and above all without any hesitation. And to no-one’s surprise, Lydie was good at it. She had been a dancer all her life and whether she pirouetted with an outstretched leg to impress an audience or to smash a windpipe was a difference in intent, not motor skill. Only in these sessions, Lydie felt power over her life, her destiny and confidence that she could care for her mum.

Cleaning the small guard room was part of her chores as well. She didn’t mind that part as much as it happened outside the chain-link fence of the refugee quarter and she could get a glimpse onto the public corridor outside. She saw Amarrian and Caldari citizens going about their business and she could see children skipping in their uniforms to a nearby school. Lydie was basically wearing a school uniform herself – it being the most donated clothes – and watching these kids without worry running to class made her feel weirdly happy. She imagined to be one of them and then cleaning the guard room wasn’t that bad. The guards were tough soldiers but they thought she was cute in her school uniform and she was fairly fluent in Amarr – her Gallente accent gave her a slight lilt that made the soldiers laugh. They frequently slipped her extra rations and things she needed for her mum. So, she didn’t minded cleaning up their ward room – soldiers are clean anyway – and firing up the totally out-of-place, ornamented, antique and likely highly illegal Samovar, basically a hot water heater where the guards prepared their drinks and food. It must have been some war loot, a huge block of solid iron that took over an hour to come to temperature and the guards knew the timing so well that they would come back to the room right when the water was boiling.

And so, on that evening, Lydie made idle chat with the two guards while cleaning their dishes when she let out that it was her 16th birthday. She needed to tell someone, let it out, it was a special day after all. The two big Amarr soldiers responded with an impromptu birthday song and one of them dashed off only to return minutes later with a genuine birthday cake – where he had found that was unclear but nobody expected it to be legally. They turned a taper out of paper and lit it – open fire was highly punishable and hence they closed the steel door to the guard room and Lydie bent over the table to blow it out, making a wish. She noticed the guards behind getting closer but didn’t realize that something was wrong until powerful fists grabbed her arms, twisted them backwards and smashed her face to the table. Instinctively she kicked backwards and hit the guards groin true but the second soldier simply body-slammed her into the wall, knocking the wind out of her. She felt his enormous hand on her throat, his foul breath across her face in rapid bursts and and his wide, fanatical eyes staring into hers. She bent backwards, reached with both feet for the wall planing to push herself off but the soldier knew that trick and like a sack of grain threw her face down on the table, cuffed her wrists and tore her skirt off. Lydie knew what would come next and before she closed her eyes, she saw the birthday cake fade through her tears.

Chapter 8 - Fire. Lydie takes matters into her own hands.

“You smell good, little dancer”, the old, blind Matari man said, and it could not have been less appropriate. She had scrubbed herself for hours and when she run out of soap, she used the industrial cleaner intended for the floors – and she used lots of it. It stung her skin, it reeked and it did not make her feel any cleaner. Lydie was running on autopilot when she turned up at the Matari camp in the early hours and sat next to the old man. She couldn’t tell Mum, she couldn’t tell the “authorities” – whatever they were. They would not believe her and if they did, nothing would happen. So, Lydie sat down next to the old man, hoping that nobody would notice her bruises. And of course everyone did. Trained killers develop an almost spiritual situational awareness. That something terrible had happened to Lydie was clear to everyone as soon as she sat down. But combat practice continued.

The old man wasn’t born blind, that much was obvious. He had suffered terrible injuries to his face that gouged out his eyes – but a very, very long time ago. While he never partook in the combat practice, he held an almost revered position among his fellow Minmatar. Why, Lydie never knew. Until now. The old man spoke:

“You smell like the industrial cleaner they made us scrub the prison floor with years ago”. A pause. “We found out that it has curious chemical properties”. A smile of good memories flashed across his face. “See, mixed with ordinary fuel it evaporates at ~80C. It turns into steam. The funny thing is that the steam is extremely explosive. A single spark will light it. Like a light switch for example. Confined to a small room – say – it will cause a nice explosion”. He turned his dead eyes to Lydie. “Sometimes a little too big of an explosion, be careful, little dancer”.

“Technically, its a detonation, not an explosion” a voice said behind Lydie. She turned. A man approached. She had sparred with him, often to absolute exhaustion but she had never heard him speak. “The liquid is perfectly harmless, won’t even burn”. He continued. “By the way, we are leaving tonight – we found a Minmatar transport who will take us back. We have unfinished business.” He handed her a large, heavy lantern “we won’t need this lantern. It is full of fuel. Use it wisely”. He also handed her surprisingly heavy sack. “Ball bearings” he said, “might come in handy”.

The Minmatar fighters stood. Each and every one of them approached Lydie, looked her in the eye and nodded. Nothing else. Just the nod. It was more comfort to her than any hug could have been, it was more respect than she had ever received and it was a sign that her world can continue, that she was still in charge of her destiny. What happened to her needed to be revenged. It was not her fault. She did not cause it, it was not her fault, not her fault.

She stood alone with the heavy sack and the lantern in a disused cargo bay of this Amarr station and took stock of her life. She was alive. She had a job to do.

Three days later, the Matari group had indeed left. How, nobody knew and nobody really cared. There was no “census” in the refugee camp per se, every few months some Gallente government official would be ushered in by a posse of Amarr religious police, quite unable to do anything for the refugees beyond smuggling news in. Orv sent messages, that he was doing well and trying the official channels to get them out. It seemed the entire refugee camp was a pawn in someone’s chessgame – someone with a lot of time on his hands. Lydie could not send any message back to her brother but a plan had taken root in hr head, if the Minmatar can bribe themselves onto a transport, she and her mum could do the same, right?

The next morning, Lydie made her mum’s bed and fed her breakfast. Mum didn’t quite recognize her anymore, sometimes called her “Orv”. Lydie dressed her when Mum’s eyes suddenly focused and gripped her eyes. “I travel in my dreams, Lydie. I travel far, to where dad is. He sends his love. He says that you are doing a great thing, taking care of me but you have to stop. You have to let me go and live your own life”. Lydie was frozen in place. “Lydie, you are my only daughter. Go find Orv, help him to forgive that Amarr capsuleer who killed your father. Yes, he killed your father but that hate is now killing Orv, just slower and from the inside”. She paused, her eyes lost focus. “Dad wants you both to grow up to love, not to fight. Remember the three washers, Dad gave you? He says they still protect you if you believe in them”. Mum’s gaze drifted. She was gone again to wherever she had her conversations with Dad. Lydie stroke her hair and told Mum that all will be well. She just had to run a little errand and they will go and see Orv. There maybe some noise but Mum shouldn’t be afraid, Lydie would look out for her. Lydie wasn’t sure whether Mum actually got any of that and stood up. She had packed two bags with as many rations as she could scrape together, clothes and things she may be needing for their long journey. Mum smiled her good bye, already speaking with dad about Orv’s kindergarten math grades.

Lydie walked slowly towards the gate. She had packed 2 bags, one for Mum, one for herself, collected the left-over rations and clothes from the Minmatar and left them in their shelter. She only carried the lantern with fuel and the sack of ball bearings towards the guard station. The guards were on their rounds and would not be back for another hour. Enough time.

She had not been in this room since the night of her birthday. She had seen the guards who pretended not to know here and she knew they were on shift tonight. There was no cake on the table. She remembered it well. She remember the the entire evening very well, as if she had watched it happen to someone else. Lydie approached the massive, iron Samovar which had been turned off over night. She found screwcap where she normally would fill the water and opened it. The detergent was stored in the closet and she carried the fuel for the lamp. Lydie quickly drained the entire fuel into the cold Samovar, then poured the ball bearings into the same cavern.

With all the fuel and ball bearings gone in, Lydie topped the Samovar off with the industrial detergent. It held a lot of volume, about twice as much as Lydie had thought. The detergent masked the fuel smell effectively and once she screwed the cap back on, there was no sign that anything was different. Satisfied that she left nothing behind, Lydie flicked the switch that would slowly heat up the mixture deep in the iron kettle. It would take an hour to come to temperature, just in time when the guards would come back. She knew them. They would walk in, joking about the refugees and how they could use them as slaves. Then they would get mugs, add their disgusting tea powder – whatever that was and open the pressure tap of the Samovar. A small jet of gas would fill the room and ignite, hopefully burn the guards badly, maybe even kill them. Rescue squads would come, Lydie would use the confusion to drag Mum out and their journey would begin. Lydie had chosen her prettiest School Uniform and even bound her hair in Amarr fashion. She would somehow convince a hauler or even a capsuleer to stow them away. She didn’t know how exactly but she was convinced that she could do it, she was cute and deadly, a combination that should solve all problem

Lydie walked out, back to the former Minmatar camp which already attracted some pathetic scavengers from the Gallente camp picking though what they had left behind. Lydie still had a fearsome reputation but it was by association – and now her protectors had gone. The scavengers looked at her differently. Lydie dropped the Lantern and the empty sack and went back to her camp to change. Mum was fast asleep.

Not much time left. The guards would arrive in 10 minutes at their room. Her plan had been to stay with her Mum and use the confusion to get her out. But Lydie felt the urge to get closer. She wanted to see for herself what would happen and she casually strolled to the fence. She spotted the guards on their round, right on schedule. Lydie knew that they would enter the room, close the heavy steel door and pour a drink. The room would contain the explosion and she would run with mum past through the main gate when the rescue squat came through. There was no way that she could be caught, she left no evidence and had not be seen. But she was afraid the guards may see her loitering, recognizing her and stop their rounds, so Lydie crammed herself into a little nook of the outside wall. Behind her was a window the the main corridor – intentionally blackened out from the outside. The nook concealed her but she could see the guards as they entered the room, closing the heavy steel door behind them.

Lydie waited what seemed an eternity. It may not have worked. She never tested it and relied on the words of an old, crazy Minmatar escaped slave. Did she actually switch it on? Could the guards smell the fuel / cleaner mix? Did a safety valve somehow shut down the massive Samovar?

Her questions were answered when she spotted a bright flash, like a halo of the door. A tremor shook her feet and the next thing Lydie saw was the door blowing away from the hinges towards her. Behind the door nothing but featureless, blinding white. Then a secondary flash appeared, much bigger, behind the guard room, ripping open the walls of the hangar bay, its light filling the entire refugee quarter. Lydie felt the heat from this second explosion like storm of sharp needles in her face before the pressure wave picked her up like a toy and smashed her with incredible force through the window behind her. Lydie’s last memory was that of a burning light filling her world, searing pain across her face and the knowledge that something had gone horribly, horribly wrong with her plan.

Chapter 9 – Rescued? Lydie wakes up and wishes she hadn’t

Voices through a fog, far away. Under water maybe. Like when Mum bathed her and she got water in her ears. Rested. Floating. Feeling good. Voices through the fog, slightly closer. Amarr. Lydie did not want to wake up. She decided against it. It was nice where she was. It was warm. She was not hungry. She was not in pain. Just everything seemed muffled, like packed in cotton balls.

Amarr voices. Speaking louder. Beside her. Light on her eyes. “Keep them closed”, Mum would say when she washed Lydie’s hair. “or soap runs into them”. Mum. Soap. Where is Mum?

Lydie opened her eyes but it didn’t work. More light but no image. Something bound tightly around her eyes. And her entire head. Lydie couldn’t feel her face. But she could hear the Amarr voices. A man, speaking with authority to a woman without. Not loud but firm. Lydie translated in her head.

“1,500ml lactated ringer push, 150 units antibiotics per hour. Keep on ventilator. She has 40% 3rd degree flash burns, face is gone, eyes are likely intact, she covered them with her hands. Cranial structure intact, no fractures, maybe a concussion. Spine compacted, 4 ribs shattered, pelvis broken in 2 places – clean fractures. Lacerations on her skin, probably went through a window backside first. Legs are fine apart from right ankle, compound fracture. Arms and hands badly burned but superficial. Flash burns are like that. A lot of tissue destruction but largely confided to the dermis. The problem is internal bleeding. Bruised kidneys, ruptured spleen and some damage to the liver. We had the robots do an initial clean up but there are some seeping wounds they can not cauterize. She will die if we don’t operate today and we do not have a suite open until tomorrow. “

“Tell her father? “

“He isn’t her father. And yes, tell him. “

“He brought her in, barging though the door with her. Practically kicked security out of the way to get her on a table. Madman. Not her father?”

“Nope, she is Gallente. Don’t stare at me. Bloodwork came back, pure, 100% Gallente. Unless Dr. Themas has some weird story to tell, this is not his daughter. “

“Why was she dressed in a school uniform?”

“Beats me and I am busy. I have 15 more victims like her. Daughters and sons of Amarr citizens. I already spent too much time on this creature. Tell her “father” to come pick up her body tomorrow night. And make sure that you inform the religious police. This smells fishy and I know why this Dr. Themas is on his station. Some funny business, was sent here in exile. So, its worth letting the authorities know. Unless of course he decides to pay a “special admission fee”. He is said to be very, very wealthy. “

Lydie decided that it was not worth waking up. She heard all but understood nothing. Who were these doctors? Who were they speaking about. She needed to see. Lydie tried to move her arms only to find out that she couldn’t. Her effort was noticed by the second voice in the room. The one who asked questions.

The voice of the woman:

“Your arms are tied. This is for your protection, they are badly burned. Can you hear me? “ Lydie tried to speak only to realize that she had a tube sticking out of her throat. Ventilated. She moved her head.

“Your father – well, the man who brought you in, found you in the main corridor after the explosion. Do you remember what happened? “ Lydie moved her head. It was supposed to be a shaking.

“There was terrible explosion in the cargo bay, it ripped 4 bulkheads out and destroyed 2 full levels, several hundred are dead. You were very lucky. Were you on your way to school? Well, cant be. I am silly. You are Gallente. What were you doing there? “ Lydie tried to clench a fist. The words “terrible explosion” and “several hundred dead” chiseled themselves into her mind. She could not remember why but she felt a wave of panic and guilt washing over her. She had done something terrible. But what? She tried to remember. Jumbled images: Her sleeping mother. The refugee camp. The lamp. The sack with ballbearings. The Samovar. The feeling on her hand when she tightened the screw cap. The wait in the corner window. The guards walking through the door. The halo of light around the door. The heat of her face.

Lydie’s memory assembled the puzzle in same instant as she tried to scream. But she was immobilized on a burn bed and only only her torso arched upward. Her breathing tube violently jerked to the side. A searing pain flooded through her body – her damaged internal organs, burned skin, the sensation ripped through the heavy analgesics.

Mum. She had killed her. She had killed all those refugees and who knows how many more. She murdered the school children that she so admired. But now she would die herself. The doctor had said it, she would slowly bleed out. It was fair. She deserved it.

Lydie’s muscles relaxed. Her mind wanted to cry but her eyes didn’t work. Her chest wanted to heave but the ventilator pushed the air in whatever she did. She was not in charge of her death. Not even of that.

+++

“Who are you”

Lydie woke and knew she was in pain before she even felt it. Her entire body was one open wound and her mind was dizzy with the conflicting signals that it received. She was not dead but she deserved nothing else.

Why was she alive? The voice repeated

“Who are you”, this time in fluent Gallente. Accented. But fluent. Educated, warm but clearly Amarr. Like the not-so-secret police who used to interrogate her mum. They asked about Dad’s ship designs. If she could remember any details of his dreadnaughts, even had blueprints, pictures. There would be extra rations, extra blankets if she remembered. Mum didn’t never had a technical bone in her body. She made an honest effort to describe the ships them but her description never went more technical than “they were very big”. And then the visits stopped.

Amarr secret police. Must be. They would execute her if she confessed. Or worse, sell her into slavery. Don’t say a word.

Lydie stayed motionless. Not so hard to do where every movement caused agony. She realized that she was breathing on her own. No ventilator. “I don’t know if you can hear me or understand me” the voice continued. “I thought you were my daughter. I heard the explosion and knew in my heart that she was in trouble. I ran down the corridor and saw you laying there. Your uniform. Your hairstyle. You looked like her. I am a doctor. I looked at your face, pulled you from the rubble and ran to the emergency room. There were many others, I saw so many, I could have helped. But I carried you. I couldn’t stop. Only when they took you in, I ran back. I have seen war, I have seen disasters. This was worse. I held it together since I knew that you were safe.”

Lydie slowly caught up. She was alive. This man saved her life, whether he had intended it or not. She owed him. She killed his daughter. She must tell him now. He will kill her and all will be well. Lydie opened her mouth to speak when the voice continued.

“They found out what happened. The guards at the refugee camp had an old Samovar. It was against regulation. It must have exploded, it happens, I have seen these things in the war. Very dangerous when they are not maintained properly. It would have killed the foolish guards and that’s that. But on the other side of the wall was a storage unit, rented out to some Planetary dealer. Caldari. He had several crates of Industrial Explosives, illegal. Stored it there. Where our children go to school. Stored Industrial Explosives.”

Lydie heard the voice trail off. There was no anger. Just deep sadness.

“They never found the trader. I guess he found his way to his god. God of Money. Whatever he prays to. May that god have mercy on him.” Mercy? Mercy? Lydie wanted to die by his hand. Right now. She killed his daughter. The man was wrong. It was not the Caldari trader. She killed his daughter. She alone. She deserved no mercy.

“I will go now. I have to talk to the police. They want to know why I rescued the one Gallente among the hundreds of Amarr. I don’t know if they believe me. But you need to stay alive and better have a good story to tell, I will be back later”.

Lydie heard footsteps and a door open and shut.

+++

Lydie opened her eyes and took in the featureless white of a ceiling. Someone else was in the room, Lydie heard sobbing. A woman. Lydie moved her head, tried to locate the source of the sound and the woman came in focus, seated by her feet, traditional Amarr dress, hunched over, her hands covering her face. A tall man standing behind her. Trying comfort but barely holding back his tears.

“You are awake” he said in Amarr – she recognized the voice. “This is my wife. After I got you to the hospital, I called her and told her that her daughter was safe. Then I had to tell her the truth”.

Lydie did not say anything. What possibly could she say? She should have been dead, their daughter should be in her place. The man spoke again: “we paid the surgeon a personal fee.”. A smirk. “He operated on you and fixed organs. I assisted. We also grafted your face back. You will look almost the same.”

Lydie cleared her throat. “Why?”

The woman looked up. “you are someone’s daughter”.

+++

The next time Lydie woke up, another man was by her bed. She instinctively feared him. He was too close. He leaned forward, he touched her hand. His face was too small for his eyes. His massive shoulders moved incessantly. His pupils swam in his enormous white eyes like fat on a soup. He saw nothing and everything. Police. “Hello Lydie. Yes I know your name. I also know the name of your mother and your brother Orv who currently studies to supply our enemies with new bionic weapons, I know a lot about you, little girl” Lydie was afraid. A few days ago she desired death, was looking for it. And now she feared this man. What could he do to her? “the Doctor who saved you, honorable man, honorable. Surely. But why did he save the one Gallente girl from the explosion scene? Was there something going on between the two of you? He is not voluntarily on this station, you know? Exile they say. Shame on his family, they say. So, anything a cute Gallente chick wants to do to get better food into the refugee camp? Consort with an older, wealthy man? No? He said it was all a case of mistaken identity. He mistook you for his daughter. Suure…. Anyway. I just came to tell you that we know about you and your heroic rescuer and will keep a very close eye on you. And once you leave this hospital, I will be standing at the front door to bring you in for questioning. You may want to start enjoying your stay here, your protector’s bribes won’t last for much longer.” Like a snake he leaned forward and kissed her wet on her lips before throwing her a wide grin, a mock salute and left the room. +++

Bill of Sales.
This is to certify that Lydie Signoret, property of the Amarr state was sold to Dr. Themas for the total sum of ISK 35,000. From this day on, she is rightfully his property to do with as he pleases, has no nationality or personal rights and is subject to his judgment only.
Dated and Signed

+++++

Chapter 10 – 28 Dead. The end of a mining career.

28 dead, 5 injured, 30 missing

“It wasn’t your fault. We all know the risk. Don’t blame yourself”. A heavy, calloused hand on his shoulder.

150 men and women under his command, 28 dead now, 5 injured, 30 missing. Sure, some of them had been rejects, drifting among the stars like dust without home or loyalty. Some had been dreamers like his father, standing by a porthole, never tired of the unblinking stars against the black velvet of space. But most had been family men, normal guys who just wanted their share of happiness, bring up good children, send them to schools rather than factories and maybe even take a vacation once in a while. They had trusted him with their lives, their hopes and their dreams.

And he had failed them.

28 dead, 5 injured, 30 missing

The rest did make it into the life boats and ejected in time before the ship disintegrated around Orv’s capsule – someone said number that was a record, normally nobody survives. The “Retriever” class mining ships have virtually no tank or at least that’s how they are normally fit. Capsuleers only value ISK/hour and fill the low modular slots of their mining barges with laser upgrades, not with structural reinforcements. A mining ship – so the calculation – can’t survive a determined attack anyway, so why delay the inevitable by a few seconds with some tiny pieces of armor if the same module slot could be used to make more ISK? Perversely, even non-capsuleers saw that logic and Orv had heard quite a few baffled comments why he insisted on 200mm steel plates. “Brick retriever” some had mocked it, “Bait”, others. Orv didn’t care. The additional mass of the steel made the Retriever maneuver like a hog but when the terrorists came for them, these plates bought the crew time to enter their life rafts. Well, most of the crew.

28 dead. 5 injured. 30 missing.

Some of the missing would eventually be picked up by the Sisters of Mercy rescue crafts. All life boats had working beacons, something that Orv personally confirmed to the astonishment of his crew. A capsuleer rarely mixes with mortals, let alone crawl into the ceiling panels of the life rafts. But when he found that several had their oxygen supply stolen, he summoned the safety officer, confronted and dismissed him on the spot. That could have gone horribly wrong, the bulky officer saw nothing but a meddling pencil-neck with a plug in his head and took a swing at Orv but missed; Orv may have been half his size but was faster and sober. A second attempt never came, Orv’s crew got involved and marched the disgraced officer off the ship into the waiting arms of the law.

28 dead, 5 injured. 30 missing

Orv had deliberately selected a system with very high traffic, somewhere in Gallente high security space. He parked his small ship near small rocks of Veldspar, competing with massive mining operations in their Covetors, Hulks and Mackinaws. Those ships fired multiple deep-core lasers each and burned the valuable ore into their holds much faster than Orv’s small lasers could. But Orv’s goal was to hide among this herd of expensive ships, even when it meant less profit for him and his crew. He banked that the terrorists would select the juicier targets instead of him. In addition, he had neither the skills nor the money to fly one of these barges but he often jealously stared at their powerful laser beams.

28 dead, 5 injured. 30 missing

He had fallen asleep after 15hours straight mining. There is no denying it. In his capsule, his body was monitored by the most advanced technology in the universe and crew knew precisely when their capsuleer was not paying attention. The capsuleer’s state of mind and body was the primary water cooler topic on all ships. Automated systems try to take over the watch but nothing can replace the computing power of a living brain. If Orv had been awake, he would have spotted the two terrorists entering the star system – Concord let them in for whatever reason. The other miners near him apparently were awake and initiated an emergency warp to the nearest station. During this maneuver, one of the Hulks must have accidentally rammed Orv’s little ship, knocking it off alignment. When the attack started, his Retriever pointed exactly into an asteroid, making it impossible to warp to safety. The terrorists may have angled for a juicier target but the only boat left in this asteroid belt was Orv’s, helplessly entangled in a rock.

28 dead, 5 injured. 30 missing

The sound of klaxons still triggered raw panic in Orv – even after all these years. It sure woke him up. His body told him that they were being targeted by 2 Catalyst destroyers at very close range and that they had no chance of escaping. Almost unconsciously, he issued the “abandon ship” alert that reverberated across the entire boat, the crew quarters, the engine rooms and even drowning out the heavy machinery compressing the harvested ore for storage in the cavernous hold of the ship. Orv had made the crew go through far more evacuation drills than normally required on a vessel of this class but Retrievers are still large industrial ships and full of narrow gangways, sharp corners, accidentally locked bulkheads and so on. When the first volleys landed, both electric and hydraulic systems failed at once. Unlike war ships, there are no redundancy systems installed. Bulkheads that normally opened with hydraulic power now needed to be winched open – not easy to do in darkness, with air escaping and the cries of the injured and dying around. When the second volley hit, the armor was already breached and structural integrity failed in the forward compartment. Orv tried to maneuver but the ship’s warp drive was scrammed and normal propulsion was useless.

28 dead, 5 injured. 30 missing

Where was Concord? What was the point of having the police ships circling the gates all day? What were they waiting for? Why didn’t they put patrols out into the asteroid belts? Unlike the real Navy, these clowns were just a traffic hazard to autopiloting ships. Everyone knew that they would never come in time to save the ship, their mission was to punish, not deter. Punish. What a joke. These terrorist capsuleers could afford hundreds, thousands of Destroyers. Their crews had even less scruple than their capsuleers – if that was possible. For the very few jobs they actually needed a human, they had rigged ejection pods so secure that Concord had no means to hurt them.

28 dead, 5 injured. 30 missing

Orv cried. He cried silently, he cried for the men and women that he could not save. He cried for his father, who he imagined to be among them. He cried for his mother who had lived for nearly two decades in the fear of receiving The Letter. He cried for his sister who slipped further out of his reach the more ISK he lost. He cried for himself, for hating himself to be weak, to care, to feel, to be human.

28 dead, 5 injured. 30 missing

“It wasn’t your fault. We all know the risk. Don’t blame yourself”. A heavy, calloused hand on his shoulder. “Many more would have died. The steel plate bought time. The safety drills worked, evacuation was the fastest I have ever seen, and the life boats did their job. And, if I may say so, Sir, stop being a victim”.

Orv looked up, his wet eyes slowly focusing on his first engineer. The drab coverall reeked of smoke, sweat, burned plastic and stardust. Orv knew the smell, his dad had sometimes come home unannounced and his bag smelled like that. He would be unusually quiet for a day or so, just watch his children play and avoid the confrontation with mum who pressured him to take a safe job on a construction platform somewhere. Then he would go back out to his stars. Mr Lavoisier had been a crewman on his Velator and against all regulation and common sense stayed with Orv as he matured through the Frigate class. Like Orv, he had no home, he had no family and the dry personnel record told a tale of personal disaster and bad luck straight out of a Minmatar holoreel. They never talked about their past but they just stuck to each other.

Orv’s tears dried up. “Would you fly with me again, Mr Lavoisier”.

“Yes, Captain, I will fly with you again and so will your crew.”

Orv stood, his head suddenly clear. “Mr Lavoisier, get the crew ready. We are going out again”. Orv turned and walked. He felt Mr Lavoisier waiting for something and faced him again.

“Cruiser class. We are done with mining, let’s go hunting”

A big grin flashed across the old engineer’s face.

“Yes Sir”.

Chapter 11 – Domestic Bliss. Lydie adapts to life as a slave

Slavery wasn’t that bad. Work was pretty light, Food was good and the clothes were actually quite nice. Amarr-style robes and stuff but they flowed nicely around her body and felt soft on the her skin. And the metal collar – well, it chafed for about 2 weeks, then she just forgot it.

As long as it showed its green pulsing glow, it was actually quite pretty.

Lydie called these her “guilty moments”. When she heard the voice that compared her current life as a slave of a wealthy Amarr doctor’s family to her previous life as refugee. During these guilty moments, the voice would tell her that she had never really been free to go or do what she wanted. First her parents, then the guards at the refugee camp, now the collar. Someone always stops you from going somewhere. And face it, where would she go? She was penniless, without connection and without family. And, oh yes, by the way, guilty of mass murder and an act of terrorism.

Compared to that, slavery was not bad at all. What does “freedom” mean, actually? To say what she wanted? What would she say? To whom? To the policeman that wanted to question her so badly about Orv about his study in bioweapons? Lydie knew that she could not resist a real, proper Amarr police interrogation. She had seen refugees dragged away only to re-appear a week later, shells of their former selves. They had given up anything and everything and were but husks that blew away. Under that treatment, Lydie would confess to having blown up that refugee camp. But her status as a slave protected her from the police better than any passport. She was property, not to be tampered with.

Freedom to go anywhere she wanted? Where would she go without money? Even the really rich were not free at all. Her masters had plenty, plenty of money. But why were stranded on this godforsaken outpost? Were they “free” to go back to their homeworld? Oh no. They were truly banished, all for the sins of their son. All that money and they could not even buy a Sigil-hauler ticket home. If she was set free, she’d board a luxury liner and just roam the universe? Yeah, right.

When she was locked up in the refugee camp, she dreamed of exploring the station, talking to the merchants about the beautiful clothes and sampling exotic foods. Well, now she was doing that – she was helping the cook to shop for groceries. Her clothes reflected her owner’s high status and nobody would hassle her. Oh, she felt the looks – mostly men – but as a slave she was untouchable by anyone but her masters.

Life was good as a slave. It truly was. It helped that it was a small household, only the butler, the cook, the two Nannies and the “security” guy – a young Amarr guy, technically not a slave, more like a servant. He was quite fetching actually, Lydie made sure her robes flowed just the right way when she walked past him, she enjoyed the almost physical touch of his eyes on her back.

The butler was a different story. He was an old man, all guts, folds of skin and sweaty palms. Used to run a much bigger household and took exile far worse than his masters. He had the Nannies beaten for minor offenses and took pride in running a “tight ship” as he called it. It was he who explained her role as a slave, straight when she came from the hospital and was too weak to walk far. He lectured repeatedly that slaves were forbidden to form liaisons in any form but that it was unfortunately common practice for young, female, low ranking house slaves to consort with the higher-ranked staff for an improvement in their work or living quarters. The repetition of this hint made it eventually into Lydie’s drug-addled brain and so it was no surprise when she heard footsteps coming down the stairs to the storage room where she was allowed to scream herself out of her nightmares.

When the keylock turned, she was fully awake. She even had to stop herself from laughing when the fat bastard clumsily made his way around the the wrapped up furniture, antique paintings and shipping crates full of table silver. He stubbed a naked toe and swore in a Nefantar dialect that Lydie could not understand. Her past martial arts mentors had spoken a Brutor dialect or Amarr, the language of their enemy, the language that all slaves used to communicate.

The butler’s hand touched her shoulder. She could hear his breath and feel the heat radiating from his body. He was old and flabby, she was young and cute, no wonder he tried. She almost felt sorry for him when she took his wrist and stood up, twisting it all along in one elegant motion, forcing him face down into her pillow. She would have to wash that thoroughly. In the meantime, she yanked his arm up behind him and placed her foot on his neck.

What followed was a complicated conversation. His screams muffled, oscillating between threatening her and promising great things if she let him go. This, while Lydie tried to explain in her halting Amarr the dangers of being horny around her. But lacking the proper anatomical vocabulary, she resorted to demonstrations by carefully breaking three fingers of his hand – one after the other – and slowly rubbing the broken ends together. She had hoped to make the point but she wasn’t sure, between his screams, she only got a few words in. She paused to give him a plausible story explaining his injuries in the morning. Slipping on wet floor on his way to the toilet. It can easily break a man’s fingers. And wrist. And arm. Which she did, his old bones came apart easily and with a satisfying sound.

So, she never was hassled by domestic staff, never was reported for anything but truth be told, she never really gave reason either. She worked hard, did her chores and did not talk back.

Freedom was overrated.

Chapter 12 – Burned Flesh. Birth of an outlaw

Dr. Themas watched Lydie serve dinner hoping that she would remind him of his daughter. She didn’t, His daughter had been a bookworm who despised all exercise. Lydie on the other hand, moved with the elegance of a dancer and the precision of a cat before a pounce. On the surface, she was the perfect domestic servant, not just obedient – that can be achieved with a whip – she anticipated the needs of her new masters even before they were aware of them. But beneath her perfection lay a menace, her eyes were cold, detached, her smile seemed painted on her face and her aura almost physically repelled the other slaves. Dr. Themas sighed. His daughter won’t be coming back and this Gallente girl would never replace her. Fully healed now she would fetch a good price. But even though she did not resemble his daughter, she reminded him of her and he could not bring himself to sell her.

Tonight, Lydie served the bread to his children, normally the task of their nanny who was sick with a stomach bug. Dr. Themas noticed that Lydie used the wrong knife, not the serrated breadknife but a longer blade, razor-sharp on both edges, made for cutting meat. It never left the kitchen and he had not seen it in a long time. A memory washed over Dr. Themas like a wave over rock.His mind was transported to their old kitchen on Sarum Prime, years ago. It was dark, he feared to open the lights. The blood stains on the floor. In his memory, he looked down on his hands, saw them hold this knife under running water, rinsing dark blood off the steel. The smell of burned flesh, doors locked, his son Keram sitting on the chair, gasping for air, in pain but too proud to admit it. Dr. Themas had served in the Navy, he knew how much pain a CAR-9 at close range can inflict but his son didn’t even wince when he cut away the charred shirt. Keram just stared at him with his black eyes full of anger while he cleaned and dressed the wound. Dr Themas, renowned surgeon with access to all modern medical technology in his hospital had to treat his wounded son in the dark using a kitchen knife.

His relationship with Keram had always been rocky. His son rebelled against the religious authority and more than once, had to be bailed out of some holding cell. Those infractions were not serious by themselves, all young men go through a phase of doubt before they find faith. But eyebrows were raised. Dr. Themas was on the path to be the personal surgeon to the Throne, no higher honor could be achieved. This position would vindicate all those years of putting his career first, his family second. His voluntary service during the Minmatar rebellions, his harrowing escape on a Sigil hauler loaded with hundreds of wounded soldiers racing against death from Hek to Sarum Prime; someone even made a holoreel out of it. The medal that the Empress personally pinned to his chest. All would be for naught, his son, a rebel, an abolitionist or worse, an atheist. Dr. Themas had received a visit from the head of the religious police. A high honor, normally. Not when the words “your son” and “apostate” were used in the same sentence. Apostasy still carried the death sentence.

Death for the son, death for his father’s career. Death for the family name. He had talked to Keram. Pleaded, begged him to lay low, work the system, join the military, earn honor, create a life for himself. For a while this worked. Keram calmed down, his grades improved, he laughed again with his baby sister.

And now this. Keram had tangled with armed police and seemingly won. A dead lieutenant somewhere, no more was said. He didn’t have to. Lieutenants of the religious police are technically ordained priests and killing one carried a death sentence without parole. His son would be publicly humiliated, possibly tortured and then hanged. His family name would be wiped off the map, Dr. Themas would face certain exile, his daughter would never see a university or marry into a good family. There was only one way out.

He could sink the blade into his son’s heart.

Dr. Themas was an expert surgeon. He could cut easily through the intercostal space into the left ventricle, angle his hand down a little and let the long blade sever the atria, aorta and pulmonary artery in one motion. His son was in so much pain already, he would not even notice the incision. He would peacefully fade in his father’s arms. Dr. Themas would then call the police, tell the whole story without omissions or lies, secure his family name forever. And the name of his son. A fallen sinner, slain by the hand of his father was surely redeemed. It was the right thing to do. The kind thing, the thing a loving father, a loyal subject would do.

Dr. Themas moved the knife. His son’s eyes locked with his own. The blade moved with surgeon’s precision and sliced away burned flesh. No word was spoken. No sound, other than the blade, the rustling of Dr. Themas gown and the slow drip of blood on the cold stone floor. His son, pale from the blood loss. His black eyes fixed, close. He knew his options, he read his father’s mind. “Do it”, the eyes said, “put us all out of this misery”.

Dr. Themas dressed the wound, turned, washed the knife and put it down, faced his son in the darkness. “Coward”, Keram’s eyes said. “You were always a coward”. Slowly, he stood, holding on to the door frame. They had not spoken a word for an hour, weighing their options in silence. Dr. Themas reached into his coat for money. It was not much but it would allow his son to bribe a capsuleer and smuggle him out of Amarr space. Keram took the money silently, a mocking grin forcing itself through the pale mask of pain. Dr. Themas opened the door for his son, dim street light illuminated the kitchen, glistened in the blood puddles. With three, four unsteady steps, Keram approached the door. “I love you, Keram”, Dr. Themas whispered. His son turned around, a silhouette in the door. “I hate you”, he whispered before vanishing into the darkness.

“Would there be anything else, Sir?” The voice ripped Dr. Themas out of his memory. Lydie stood behind his two youngest children holding the tray with the bread, the knife. Her piercing eyes seemed to probe into his mind. He stirred. Sweat dripped of his forehead. “No, Lydie, this is all, you may go”.

“Very well, Sir. Good night, Sir”.