A tale of one cyno or two

Author: Erylis Aphelyon

Original post: https://forums-archive.eveonline.com/message/6170523#post6170523

Entry for the YC117 Pod and Planet Fiction Contest in the Eight Thousand Suns in New Eden category.

Are you really sure it is a good idea sir ? The voice echoed through the pod and my ears like a thunder rumble. Jun is definitely a good crew leader, but when it comes to doing things “out of the book” he was always against it. I could hear his heavy breathing as microphones were relaying all discussions on the navigation deck. -Of course it is, we have been waiting for three full days, it’s an opportunity we can’t allow ourselves to miss. My tone doesn’t show any inflexions nor any feelings. It is the best way to lead, and work, cold and steady like lead rounds before detonation. I’ve seen many crews serving under my command, and way more die by my mistakes of judgment. I was young, eager to show the 24th crusade that their investment was worth something. But I was also incompetent, blind and foolishly thinking I was immortal. Only love settled me down, and let me understand my blindness. I used to be a proud and cheerfull warrior and once, I made a mistake. Never mix life and work,it is well known, but Eryn was such attracting, kind and comprehensive that I was feeling more alive than anyone. We lived years in the Great Wildlands, fighting side by side as pilot and crew commander in our frigate the day, and sleeping together the night. But our grace state couldn’t be endless. I went on to be too eager on a target, fool me. Love is a powerfull weapon, but the blood taste in my mouth was more powerful that damned time. While chasing a heavily damaged incursus, I didn’t listened to my well prepared reports sent to the interface by my love, I was only seeing this incursus, pouring oxygen and flame through its hull breach. He was fatally wounded, I could have let him go out that he wouldn’t have survived the warp jump and dislocated himself, I could have left. But I didn’t, and that cost me Eryn. I never understood how much my crew was important until this day: this chase. If I wasn’t eager, I would have heard the fear in her voice as she was stating that a svipul fleet was coming, I would have heard her begging me to warp out while it was time. But the pod is almighty, the true power resides in it, and no one can interfere from pod’s commands in a ship. Well, I felt almighty until some two hundreds and eighty millimeter shredded her from me. And turned my life to hell I chuckle, how lame I was, after that I desperately tried to avenge her, feeling it was the best way to end my life and I killed crews after crews and became “Loss-Zexion”, the one who always go back to station in a pod. I still can remember every name of commander I lost, his family, his friends and this number: twenty seven. The number of ships I lost before understanding how weak and useless I was. Then, slowly I started to seek another way to become useful to the Empire, to show my worth, to live again. It came with exploration, and Eryn last dream, she used to love watching the sun, blazing and burning from all his might and she told that she would be the happiest woman ever to marry me in front of a Wolf Rayet. From this day on, I seeked, scanned, hunted one of those rare systems were two suns shine like jewels. It was my requiem, and my last goodbye to her. Years after years, I started to learn how to watch, and see the space in his true beauty. Savage, endless, imprevisible lands where the human can travel, listen, and learn. I started to enjoy myself again, and found out the best way to take the better of my crew, a melt down of rudeness, commanding and smooth apprehension of the aspirations of all the members. A frigate crew is limited, we might be more than ten, but never much more than twenty, and I felt it was my duty to help them to advance. A pod pilot is considered as an almighty god, but a god can be hated, and abandoned. In those cases, death is at the closest gate. But in case of a pod pilot that cares, protects and work together with the crew. All the ship become a sole entity, behaving like an hydra, one and many at the same time, showing the best of the hull. I shake my head in the pod, enough of thinking, it is time to act: -Align to the beacon Jun, we have been cloaked and scanning regularly since the start and no one showed up, it’s our opportunity. I turned my eyes, and the ship’s sensors toward the singularity. Glowing dark in the goldish sky of Amarrian constellations, it was here, radiating of mystery: A sleeper ancient data terminal, unguarded and free to use. It was sparkling sometimes as if it was trying to re-activate it’s cloaking device. But all we saw was a radiating emission of ladar mixed up with magnetometric. Even if the radiation itself would have contented the scientist, what lies in it would be way more worth. I ask : -Coms, anything new on the directional scanner? Twenty meters behind my approximate location, Lucy and Helynn send me the latest results of the hours: -nothing since the enveilling of the cloack by the drifter battleship. The scan is clear since the three days. At the beginning, we were following a sleeper battleship to gather Intel for Amarr headquarters. Drifer was the number one priority. The job was well paid, and I would have some chances to get some places for my crew in the next batch of pods. The best way to thank my crew after all the services they offered me. But during our pursuit, we stumbled across this suspicious sleeper looking site. What caught my interest is the fact that the drifter battleship shadowed soon after from all scanners, and I’ve already explored and digged in some ancient relics from sleeper era. But this one was looking different, it’s power core started fluctuating and emitting during the drifter approach, then we saw a gloom of red light in the whole system that corresponded to the exact moment of the drifter disparition.

For this special mission, we were issued a new type of prototypal frigate, a design made up by project Doomsday and sanctum best engineers. Project Doomsday was formed after Crielere Fall, by recruiting some former workers, their first work used to be the the anathema, but they didn’t stopped their researches here. After allying themselves with the sanctum, they built up an “evolved” astero following some patterns from the evolved drones hive, and some spare parts of drifter battleships. None of them were killed during the tragedy of Sarum, but some of them were lightly damaged, and some parts of their armor were blowed up in space. More precisely a core propulsion unit and some armor parts that the Amarr Empire immediately scooped for researches. No precise information’s or technologies could be gathered from them, but they were essentially able to make them work, and results passed their more foolish hopes. And the result is under my control, a light, heavily armed modified astero, featuring the best technology in any kind of frigate, even threatening the cruiser category in raw defense and electronics. The particular light drifter metal plating allowed them to fit more equipment, with a lighter weight of armor, allowing us a better maneuverability. The dual core propulsion system of the astero was replaced by the unique drifter propulsion unit and a modulator of frequency. The two arced wings of the rear where replaced by a full drifter only ring that allowed us to completely hide our sensors and propulsion, making us invisible on directional scanners except warping right on the top of the ship. The whole ship was glowing in the shabby silver tone the drifter are commonly seen and renowned for, and the tests showed some impressive capabilities, with the drifter modified rear allowing to switch from afterburner to microwarpdrive and even generating a little jump drive for extreme occasions without needing any supplemental equipment. This was a precious baby, and I was kindly asked to bring it in one piece, that wouldn’t be so hard as it was also packing the impressive cloaking and hacking equipment of an Astero class frigate. -Speed at 700 meters per second Sir. -Time before we get on hacking range? -We actually are on hacking range. I nearly gasped, less than a minute ago we were at near three hundred kilometers from the structure, and we traveled all the distance cloaked. I manage to calm my heart beat rate and command: -Command deck, lower the cloack. Answer immediately bolt from the intercom: -Done -Navigation, align us to a safespot and warm up the jump drive, I want to be able to leave if anything shows up. -Done They all react in a calm professional way, perfect. -Jillian, it’s up to you, burst the defenses of this electronic system and tell us what’s in -Here I go! I grin a bit in my pod, while staying alert and seeking the little detail in all our scanners that would mean any danger. Jillian is what I would genuinely call as a friend, he was young, crazy on the borders but it was impossible to find better hacker in the whole cluster. I was carefully checking scanners with the rest of my crew when we saw the biggest bolt of magnetic signature possible. -Commander, have you seen? -I do, Jillian, anything? The answer didn’t came, I wait five second and ask, without showing any stress: -Jillian is there a problem? -… Shutting down all other com links and only switching his cabins console microphone on I could hear his intense breathing, almost struggling: -Jillian what is up? -Sir… how… look at that. As soon as he murmured I understood we had a huge thing incoming, luanching some supplemental scanning, I start the execution of an immediate warpout and I finally take a look at the results. I merely hear the navigation crew voices echoing to my mind: -Oh my… this can’t be… I struggle with myself, what I might have discovered was enormous, but I had to be sure: -Jillian, run a second copy of the whole database of this thing, in two different servers we need some backups. -Yes sir -Salvaging, do you copy? The answer come a bit late, but still comes to my hears: -Yes sir? -Do you think our little baby can scoop complete control system of this thing. -Let me think and seek where it is. I look again to the lonely relic, it is enormous indeed. Our frigate was looking pretty much ridiculous in comparison to the behemoth, fielding some hundreds of meters of arrays. Even if our frigate was light and it’s bays were modified for an increased cargo hold of urgency supplies as some hull repairers, armor and a spare set of propulsion in the case the drifter one crashes. It would be hard to guess if some drifter hardware would fit In our bays.

-Sir … sir ? -Tell me Salvaging? I noticed that I stayed something like ten solar minutes just wondering what lies behind this sealed databases. I shake out my head a second time and listen: -We can scoop it, but our actual cargo bays won’t be able to take it. -Which size? Jun answered flawlessly, his slef-control completely recovered: -if we cut clean and scoop the cables of alimentation, 70 meters cubed for the central node, the main problem is that there is like hundreds of secondary nodes connected in a full relay. An archon couldn’t take all in it’s bay. I think a bit, Jillian managed to scoop some beginnings of research logs, and it seems the structure holds loads of them that are all invaluable in our fight against drifter. Mutering myself I wonder: what is the best, letting everything here and calling for a reinforcement fleet would be suspicious to all intelligence groups scattered in the cluster. I already fear that this prototypal frigate was followed by some cheetahs all around since our entry in the Catch. And more of all, there is still the risk that someone else stumble on it, and scoop it before us. It would take us a long time to head back to 24th crusade station while being unseen, contact a CEO and authenticate all the datas. -Jillian? -Yes sir? -Are all the datas what I think, and are all of them stored in the central node? I wait a bit as I hear him typing on his console. I take another look at the first entries of the logs. It was a cluster map, but filled with strange sort of waves radiating in real time at different speeds and frequencies. It was more than a map, from what I learned from my firsts ops in fleets, it was a cynosural map, at a far greater level than I could think -It is… I take a deep breath: -Scoop it!

-o-

The salvaging took nearly five hours of intense work and concentration. Hopefully, nothing showed up on scanners, space was quiet, and work well done. -I’m sure the crusade will take that from the payout. I chuckle at Helyn ‘s commentary. -Yes, indeed but we needed all the other equipments in the cargo holds. I allow myself to laugh; all these precious supplies of “augmented” hobgoblins, capacitors batteries and navy equipments floating in the nothingness would cost as much as a pod operation. And I didn’t even counted the number of canisters we had to throw out of the hull to install the central node in the drone bay. We were now weaponless, but not without any abilities of flight. I could easily understand the shock that I did to my crew members when I ordered to do so, but they merely guess that the value of those knowledges transforms this to little pocket money in comparison. Our engineer was first impressed by the clockwork precision of every piece of material we scooped in but he was left spellbound when the pieces recognized themselves and synchronized. -Command deck, are we all clear? -Yes sir, ready to go. -Perfect, at my order, warp to the Whormhole -… we can do that? I refrain myself from laughing when I hear, I was asking another thing that were not “in the book” to Jun, the poor guy I must be shocking to him. -3..2…1…jump The space blurred out as we jumped, a fraction of seconds later we landed… not exactly where I expected. Amamake, planet III, moon 1 But… we didn’t took the whormhole at all, we scanned it five days at all, and it was supposed to lead to Sinq Laison. For the first time since ages i shout: -WARP THE HELL OUT!

-o-

-Can someone tell me what just happened? Everyone kept silent as I was watching the green K3 type radiating. I don’t know how we managed but we entered in a class three black hole system. I take some deep breath and I ask again, in my most controlled intonation: -Navigation, you confirm we just left amamake thirty seconds ago. -Yes sir. Everybody in the ship was left spellbound, we managed a 30 system jumps without any gates, not once but two times. I was flabbergasted, I tuned on the drifter map, and I my mouth just opened wide. -What…how… -Self cynosural jump sir. I dipped in my memory, I did some learning about that ages ago, but I always remembered that for a cynosural travel two ships are needed. It is a general rule of thumb: a jumper, and a beacon. -It’s not even possible, and check out that. I put the “drifter map” in full screen to everybody and show them the news: -Each concentric set of circles represent one jump, and work by pairs as it seems. And now, let’s superpose that with the actual cynosural and cluster map. The two images merges, and slowly a recurrent patern show up, and finally, Helyn gaps: -Wait… it’s an actual cyno-jump map of the drifters… it’s the way they know how and where we are? I keep silent, evaluating this option and wondering : our fleets weren’t able to catch any drifter fleet and scramble them as they usually disappeared after a gate. Vanishing without any trail in the outer space. But that could explain us a lot. -If any of these waves reflect a ship using self cynosural… does that mean. Helyn doesn’t finish her sentence that I confirm: -Yes, we have a direct time map of the drifter fleets movements, as they are the only one featuring this technology. And furthermore, they use whormholes as beacons. -What? -I do not know, but it’s my best bet to the “why’ they tend to disappear in whormhole space. Usually we let our ships being sucked up in wormhole W-space without interacting. But no one tried some cynosural jump device on them. I let everyone understand the power that lies behind this, and ask: -Do you know if we can modulate the jumps? I hear typing again, and some murmuring from the deck: -So, supposing we jumped at full speed, and looking to those datas. We can suppose this is linear… I let her doing some hard mathematics and cynosural theory, it’s her field of studies, at the same time I start to actively scan for a Wormhole with my other crew members. We take well care to not activate the drifter connected jump drive and rely to a second security propulsion unit to make “small” one Astronomical unit jumps. It does cost energy and time, but we stay cloaked and no one pay attention to us according to scanners. I keep an eye to the particular coordinates of our first jump. Hours after hours, I can see a fading in the power of the signal, and after half a day the signal completely disappear of the drifter scanner. I keep that in mind and work to measure every wavelength, and signal hours per hours in order to give them to the Amarr headquarters, and cross link them with sleeper apparition reports to see if my supposition is right. I hope so…

-o-

I got awaken out of my pod by Jun, shaking me out of my bed. -Sir, sir ! You need to go on the deck! I instantly clear up my mind, and step up. In less than five seconds I am in the corridors, dodging crew members and showing no emotions. -Tell me everything. He explains me the situation as I go to the command deck where the pod is located: -We did as you asked and kept an active eye on the drifter ancient system, and it seems they are all warping in it! -Are you sure of that? We enter the elevator that will lead us to the pod, as the cabin doors close he shows me a copy of the drifter map: And indeed, I could clearly see and radiating dot of waves centered to the ancient coordinates we were 6 hour earlier according to the timestamp. -Is the cloak working fine? -All good. The elevator’s doors open wide in front of the pod, I smile to my second and say: -Let’s see what’s out.

-o-

The space was glowing in its usual tone, and seems all quiet. I over watch all the sensors and check the last databases entries about sleeper excursions and fleet compositions. There is no way we can fight in direct front against them. A full war fleet couldn’t repel them out, so this prototypal frigate couldn’t even scratch their shields.. But… with our mobility we could lure them out and slip out of their sensors. I tune up my intercom and ask: -Helyn, did you managed to understand how to use this new travel way. -Merely, and it’s experimental… -Fill me in. I hear her taking a deep breath and looking on her personal notes.The whole crew was listening to her: -Take nothing for granted but, when we jumped from amakake we used full capacitor in the jump and we were still close to the whormhole. -Ok, and what. -It seems we used what I will call the “maximum range of self jump”. But if we look closely to the constellation approximate location: and how we were placed when we jumped. We can draw a straight line from our warp direction, alignment and the initial and terminal system. I check by myself, and her first assertion was true. I was still spellbound, a maximum range of appreciatively twenty gate jumps in less than five seconds, it was more than impossible from the physical point. I don’t have any knowledge in science external from the military school but still, I was pretty sure about me. -But why this system? -We landed close to a Whormhole. Silence… -Really? An image appears in front of me, and indeed we landed close to a two kilometer wide singularity. I wonder: -Can you control the range? And our approximate destination? -That’s where we need to test out. My heart beat slowly start to increase in my chest: -Develop your idea. -If we make a scale about how much capacitor we need to warp to a precise constellation, we could control our destination via our alignment and energy entry. -A sort of “super” acceleration gate -Indeed. I take my time to think, there must be a trap, it’s too good to be true. -Do we make a “signature” each time we jump? -We have to try to know… This is bad, this is a terribly bad idea but I already start to grin out. I feel excited, alive like no other days when I hear an alarm. A monstruous spike of leaving wave appeared on the drifter-map from the ancient relic, and soon after a huge mass appeared on sensors. -Helyn… it’s time to see if you really earned your graduate in spaceship travel. The hunt already has started.

-o-

The third time passed better than the two previous ones, the first time was catastrophic, as soon as we landed we got nearly caught out by two squadrons of guristas. Luckily the datas we needed were already collected and we initiated our second jump. As soon as we landed I confirmed my first point, wormholes are a required element to warp and land. I kept confident in my crew for the data collection and I carefully aligned the prototype to the next direction. -Cap at hundred units… 3 …2 …1 …Warp The process repeated times after times and I managed to gather some specificities. Each time I jump and land, we emit a wavelength in the drifter map which is proportional to the jump distance. This phenomena was also easily seen to anyone in the system as we flash a general mutlifrequency signal similar to the cynosural that could be picked up by every scanners. Pinpointing the exact destination was hard, but possible to guess the actual constellation at more or less two gate jumps, the randomness given by the wormholes locations. I couldn’t check if the number of whormhole in system could change the destination that my sensors pick up the trace of two drifter cruisers, chasing us since the start. -Sir, do you think they can uncloack us? -I don’t want to play guessing games, Helyn, can you warp us directly at Amarr Prime? -Align those coordinates. I carefully align and prepare myself, my blood is boiling in my veins and I can feel tension in my crew member voices even behind an intercom and in the warmth of the pod I felt cold. -Cloack ready..3..2..1 I see the green light fade in my pod and I shout as soon as the drifters start to light up of devilish black tones auguring a painful death if we stayed here. -WARP

-o-

The fight was raging between the two prophecy fleet issue, overseen by Amarrian rulers, the scope and random spectators whiling to grab as much knowledge form the finest elites of the cluster. The on fielding the house of khanid started to flash red as his armor was moltened by a combined fire of heavy pulse laser. In the general beacon we could hear commentaries about the potential elimination of Khanid from the Trials. At that exact moment, everyone witnessed the upcoming defeat, but no one really understood what happened at the exact moment of the explosion. A read light emission bursted everyone scanners, putting concord on it’s highest alert state as they identified the signal as a cynosural land, right here in the highest security space. Some short moments later two other ones echoed to the first one, and sooner than expected the prototypal astero landed on grid of the Amarr home station, starting a memorable mayhem. Soon after the 24th fleet and concord com chanel were flooded of alert messages and everyone was crawling around: -Unidentified frigate, evacuate the arena! Fire at will! The orders started to pound as the poor frigate opened his com chanel and it’s identification beacon and Zexion shouted: -Project Doomsday, identification code … asking for fire support, repeat… The message streamed again and again to the beacon as the frigate started to heat it’s propulsion unit. Struggling to reach the station as amarrian, capsulers and concord fleets landed all around, they waited for the Armageddon of laser… that never came. Until the drifter cruisers landed.

-o-

-I couldn’t imagine that two lone cruiser without support would deal as much damage. But it was worth it. I follow the high commander in the central meeting room of the station. I don’t feel at ease, I was going to face the higher power of my empire, I needed to show that this was a good price for the reward: -Did you made your part of the contract? -Yes indeed… they are all capsulers, it was hard to get all of them in the batch but I managed. I allowed myself to smile, the amarr empire earned some new capsulers of great value, and devoted to the empire. The doors open wide and I nearly gasp: -So this his him? My amarrian superior noded, the concord DED division headmaster looked me and I felt almost childish under his sharp blue eyes. He continued: -You have many things to explain us, and first of all how you brought us two cruiser that blew up half of my wing. This was going to be a case of “hard diplomacy”, the door closed behind me for a really important discussion that would turn my fate

-o-

-So it is yours ? -Not exactly, i am allowed to use it for special operation purposes by the DED. I look to my ancient crew members, now all capsulers. Jun asked: -And you have selected your crew? -I got one also issued by Concord, with a special cynosural emission authorization and some authorization of use of the cynosural as sure as I don’t bring mayhem under their station. -Neat. I look at it, it was truly a beauty, it’s four letter name was now carved in gold at the front of the hull and I almost fell into melancholy. -So what’s the next target? -I have to locate the Pagan Matura, but I feel it will be easier to slip around blood raider space with it… especially with my crew. I start to laugh and turn back to see them, my crew, my friends. And I point jillian: -How the hell you managed to pirate DED databse and put all of you in the crew? -I don’t know what you talk about! He purposely blink his left eye and we all allow ourselves to laugh, this was going to be a special experiment again, the mutlipod frigate, built up in drifter technology. No treasure in space could escape us. -So here we go? Asked Helyn -I don’t know why we aren’t already in!

-o-

The DED commander heard a big “bang” and it’s office trembled a bit. His left eyebrow rose a bit and he chuckled. Soon after he received a report: “ HMS Eryn Undocked in irregular way and broke the station sensors and armor by warping directly through the station hull

Engaging pursuit: [yes] [no] “

He smiled, this experiment might make him jump and lose all his hears, but for sure it was going to be an interesting group to study. After pressing the no button, he dipped again in his bureaucracy… if only capsulers knew the mess they create by warping like that all around. Anyway he had the map… that was good start. The new spike was rising and other echoed to it. Containing his laughing he activated his com-link -Prepare Concord stike fleet, two drifter for lunch! Ready our batteries, we have to greet them in the proper way they did!

-o-

The End