Junion Points of View

Author: Particul

Original post: https://forums-archive.eveonline.com/message/6157213#post6157213

Entry for the YC118 Pod and Planet Contest in the Other Thing Just Make You Swear and Curse category.

“I'm bored!”

Andra stepped out of IntraWar 7 : The Jovians Return quickly followed by his best friend Danhi, the battle scenes fading around them to leave the familiar Caldari space station hangar bay surroundings of the CCP Holosimulator . Giving the drab brown and gray interior his usual disgusted glare (would they EVER introduce a splash of blood or something to liven it up?) he sat down on a convenient ledge and grumpily eyed his Caracal cruiser slowly spinning in the artificial gravity at the center of the hangar. He was currently using the Wiyrkomi skin coloration which made it look rather like a moldy insect, but at least it was better than the Nugoeihuvi one. People had asked him why it was rusty when he had used that. Oh well, at least ship spinning meant something these days – there was a time when it didn't!

“Whats wrong Andra? I thought we were doing OK out there. We had the Jovians on the run, and we were picking up some good loot. We could have sold it for some nice ISK and maybe bought a new ship skin each.” Danhi didn't look too pleased – most of their friends were Caldari Navy brats like them and one of their major status symbols revolved around the ship and skin you were currently flying in the simulator. Only real numbums flew ships without a skin.

Andra sighed. “Oh I dunno. It all seems so pointless sometimes. We spend most of the day playing in the holo or plugged into the Skill Trainer getting skills injected and nothing changes. I mean I'm nearly 12 and you are 10 – we must be of some use to somebody! My dad has jump clones all over the place, not just here on Urlen and I bet your dad has some too. When are they going to let us set some up? I could put one on your planet and come visit you in person instead of using the comm channels. Where is it you live again, somewhere in Citadel?”

Danhi nodded. “Yeah we live on Kakki – and DON'T say anything about the name! It's not funny after the first billion gazillion times and if you do try and make a joke I will kick this silly CCP box right in the nuts and bolts. If its got nuts and bolts.” He looked dubiously at the inoffensive metal casing. “Anyway, what does CCP stand for? Everybody just calls it a HoloBox or Hob.” He stared up at the CCP banner over the Captains Quarters door on the far side of the hangar bay and walked towards it, taking care not to hit the OPEN switch on the door. After all, everybody knew that it was a cunning trap and the only place the door led to was the vacuum of empty space and a swift exit from the simulator. “Hey! It says something else under 'CCP'! It's a bit hard to read but I think it says 'Falcon Industries'.”

“Never heard of them so they can't be any good” said Andra with the certainty of youth. “And my dad said that CCP stands for 'Children Can Practice'. At piloting spaceships I guess, although my mom said its more like practice at handing over money. Dad laughed and said there might be some truth in that. Parents are weird.”

He winced slightly as a soft female voice sounded inside his head “Junior Caldari Cruiser Level Four training completed. Junior Shield Operation Level Four started. Please check your Evemon Skill Queue for further details.” Well that was another skill done. Maybe it wouldn't be too long before he could fly a battlecruiser in the simulator! Flying a Drake would be awesome! People flying Drakes never got turned down in fleet operations because every fleet had to have at least one Drake or people would laugh at them and think they were Minmatar or something. He would check the skill queue when he got home.

That reminded him of something else. “Hey Danhi – did I tell you my dad took me through the gate to Jita the other day! It was totally amazing! I thought there were lots of people on Urlen, but Jita is like the centre of the galaxy. There were ships all over the place and we practically had to queue to get into the docking bay. We nearly got bumped by some other ships and my dad said most of them were Gunes, but when I asked him what that meant he said they belonged to mittens. I dunno what gloves has to do with it but he was quite careful about docking at the Naval Assembly Plant station. Maybe the Gunes have cold hands and don't fly very well or something - I expect they crash into people a lot if they have gloves on while flying. And I'm sure I saw some wrecks outside the station, so that would explain it.”

He frowned as he remembered some of the chaos at the undocking ring. “The other problem with Jita was that it was really noisy and took ages to get anything done because of the crowds of people that were shouting and waving all the time. I think some of them must have been Gallente as one man was waving a banner that said Fly Gallente and drink beer while Drones do all the work. If Gallente pilots drink beer while they are flying its no wonder they are awful. I tasted beer once and it was mega yeuchy, but dad said it was an ack wired taste. Well that's one I definitely don't want to be wired for. There was one man lying on the floor with a can in his hand and I thought he might be ill, but dad said he just had Alcohol Level 5 and we should leave him there. I was going to get a closer look at the banners when we came home but dad warped us away from the station so fast I barely had time to look at anything. He said he had an instawarp and an instaduck for Jita stations, just in case of accidents. Why would he have a duck? Have you ever been to Jita?”

Danhi's face lit up with enthusiasm as he replied. “You bet! My dad took me there a while ago. Did you go to the markets? Totally amazo! It's full of merchants selling things and some of them are really really kind. One kept offering to double my pocket money for me, but dad wouldn't let me give it to him. He said he was a dirty scummer and decent folk should steer well clear and keep both hands on their ISK. He looked quite clean to me and kept showing me his bank details to prove that he had lots of money, but dad threatened to buy something from him for minus a billion ISK if he didn't go away. I didn't know my dad was rich! I'm going to ask for a really big present next birthday.”

“A billion ISK? You could almost buy a com-plex with that much! What does your dad do to earn that much money?” Andra looked envious. “My dad doesn't earn anywhere near THAT much and he works for the security services of the Navy doing missions for Mr. Ansunainen.”

“Well he works for Mr Saariski at the Business Tribunal and they do distribution stuff. If it pays that well I'm going to be a distributor when I grow up and distribute things everywhere. I was going to be a lowsec pirate and blow up Amarr slave traders but it sounds like distributors get rich. I could get rich first, buy a battleship and then blow up the slave traders!”

Andra looked wistfully at his Caracal. It was a pretty good ship, but he didn't think it would stand up well to blowing up slave traders in lowsec as it just didn't have enough capacitor to do everything he needed, especially with the rather low level of his skills. Running out of cap in a battle was a surefire way of having to put GooF's in local and come home in a capsule, and slave trader ships had a reputation for being very well defended. By slaves presumably. A battleship would be a much better bet. A sudden thought struck him.

“If you blow up a slave trader, don't you blow the slaves up as well? And anyway, how do you tell if its a slave trader or not?”

Danhi waved his arms expressively. “Well they are bound to be slave traders if they are flying an Amarr ship – who else would fly one? And if they use lasers it just confirms it – only Amarrian pilots would use lasers. Too lazy to load missiles I expect. And I don't really care about the slaves 'cos they are Amarr too – they would probably be pleased. You know what they say Better grave than slave.”

A good point Andra decided. Better by far to not be Amarr as the other saying went. Caldari was obviously the best you could be, all his friends said so. The best people, the best ships, the best missiles and the best shields. Once he had all the skills he would be unbeatable! The thought of his skill queue, which already stretched out for weeks to come made him realize that there was a whole line of skills he had not even started yet – and they would be really needed in lowsec. “Hey Danhi – how good are your scanning skills? Our school science teacher said they were really important if you left highsec, and I haven't even started on them yet. He said you need them to track down where ships were hiding in safe spots.”

“Scanning skills? Are you sure we need them? Why can't we just set up gate camps and shoot people as they come through the gates like those Testers do? And anyway my dad said you don't need scanning skills for Minmatar ships – you just follow the trail of bits that have fallen off as they go through the system. I guess you maybe do need them for the others though. That's saddo! More skills to learn and I'm only on Cruiser Level 2.”

“Gate camps!? You want to be a snarky gate-camper? Everybody at school knows that gate-campers are the pits. Osca Trallen and Daven Janes both said that gate-campers were no better than Prawndemic Legion, and they only fight when they have much bigger fleets than anyone else and then they run away a lot. Ugh! Not me! I want to be something super studdo like a Fraction Warfare fleet commander. “

“I didn't say I wanted to be a gate-camper. I just said we could do it if we were a bit short on scanning skills. And I'm not sure about Fraction Warfare either – Johan said it meant you had to go round and round in circles for a long time waiting for an enemy who would then fly away because he was scabbed up. I think that would be good riddance because scabs are nasty – you remember that Jixx Ravix guy? He was always going on about how bad his scabs were, and look what happened to him – he got a job as a poster painter! Ugh!”

Why was it that everything you wanted to be had a drawback? Sometimes more than one. Andra thought hard about professions but came up empty. It was much simpler in the simulator where you went out and shot stuff and had no worries about anything else other than remembering to scoop any drones you might have had out there. Of course he couldn't shoot Macra Fordeni as he only lived down the corridor from home and was much bigger than Andra, which was a recipe for a good pounding. Macra didn't take kindly to losing ships. The memory of the last pounding surfaced and he grimaced.

“Repeat after me (pound). You will not shoot my ship (pound) or I will awox all your assets (pound) (pound). And if you go home and cry to daddy (pound) I will tell everyone you are descended from crybaby Gallente market traders (pound).”

Andra did not know what an awox was but it sounded unpleasant and not the sort of thing a cool leader of men would have on his ship. He envisioned a future where he was flying a logistics ship and 'accidentally' missed Macra's call for shield reps when he needed them. The best part was that he would not be firing at anybody, just doing rep transfers. But the thought faded as he realized that it meant being a logi pilot. Who would want to be that? Everybody shouted for reps when they were being shot at, but the rest of the time they just laughed at your killboard stats.

“What else could we try Danhi? I don't want to be a miner and market trading is really boring. You just sit there and buy and sell stuff. My kid sister Gevlonia could do that and she is only eight. Any ideas?”

“Well we could try running Incurshuns, but I heard some strange stories about doing that. They say it pays really well but you have to be dead to be accepted into one of their fleets.”

That made Andra blink. “Dead? How can you fly ships if you are dead? Are you sure about that?”

Danhi nodded vigorously. “Oh yes. Our Evening Uni instructor said only people with no lives could stay in fleet long enough to get the payoff, and he should know – he looks pretty dead to me already. He is really old and must be almost forty. And if they got no lives they must be dead, it stands to reason. Maybe the ships have skeleton crews - that would be mega amazo! Skeletons walking around the ship with their bones going click-clack click-clack.”

He illustrated this by walking stiffly around in circles with his arms raised making clacky bone noises and saying “I am a skeleton” in a robotic voice until Andra told him to stop.

“I'm serious Danhi! And anyway that's not going to work. I am not going to get dead just to do an Incurshun, no matter how well it pays. If you are dead you go all green and moldy and bits of you drop off.”

Danhi agreed “Just like Minmatar cruisers then.” Both boys laughed and turned back to pondering more important things like their futures. Which of the many and varied occupations available would welcome two brave, strong and loyal Caldari pilots such as themselves?

“There's wormholes” said Danhi doubtfully “But I don't know much about them. Somebody said there were no locals in them so it might be kinda lonely. And I checked the worm holes in our garden and they all look too small even for my finger, let alone me.”

Andra looked superior “Not those worm holes silly! You need the big ones out in space – the ones that look like giant drains. They are all swirly and suck you in like bathwater and you come out somewhere else. You have to scan down comic signatures to find them and we don't have scanning skills yet, so they are out.”

Danhi looked intrigued and somewhat horrified. “Bathwater? Do you have baths at your place then? With real water? We all use sonic showers, its much more hygienic my mom said. She saves our water ration for growing things. She got some Jovian tomato seeds from her friend Sugar Kile once, but they came out funny and tried to eat her pet lizard and dad had to use his gardening laser on them. He said they must have CSM disease but when mom asked him what that was he said it stood for Cant Stop Managing. She said she didn't believe him and he was to leave Sugar alone as she was a real hard worker.”

Andra considered the idea of lizard eating tomato plants and wondered what the chances were of persuading Danhi to get him one. Macra Fordeni had a lizard...

“No I don't have baths, I just saw one in an old holo about ancient people and the water went all swirly like I said. I don't want to go through a wormhole anyway, not if it makes the same sort of noise as bathwater – it sounded just like Macra after he has been eating humburgers. This isn't good. We are running out of things we can do. What's left?”

Danhi wandered around the hangar bay looking for answers, but sadly failed to find any. Being a grownup was proving more difficult than he expected – and then it hit him! “Capitals! We can fly capital ships – I can learn to fly a Dreadnought and you can learn to fly a Carrier! That would be super amazo! Nobody could kill us and if anybody tried I could blast them and you could set fighters on them!”

“Wait a minute – how come you get to fly a Dreadnought? I have better skills than you so I should get to fly one. And anyway, how long does it take to learn capital ship skills? It probably takes weeks. That's like forever!” Andra had never thought of himself as impatient (he was), but the idea of waiting that long to accomplish something seemed like an eternity. On the other hand – capitals..... He was lost in thought for so long that Danhi started to get worried.

“Andra? We don't have to learn capitals if you don't want to. We could try something else. It was just an idea.”

Andra came back to reality slowly, a gleam in his eyes. “Dreadnoughts..... wow! I never thought of capitals. And they say that the Divs, the ship builders are going to work on them as well and make them even better.... I guess we could take turns flying the Phoenix. One week I fly it and you fly the Chimera, next week we swap it around. Never mind slave traders – we could go blow up Amarr itself and get rid of that Empress of theirs.”

“Funny you should say that” said Danhi “I heard on the holonews that somebody already had. Killed the Empress I mean, not blown up Amarr. It said there was a big fight going on to decide who would be the next Emperor. I don't think there are any girls involved so it won't be an Empress this time. Just as well really, 'cos girls are silly and are not interested in important things like shooting stuff. My mom says that its Builders who really rule, not Breakers, but she teaches at the Social Skills department so I'm not sure she knows about anything important like wars and stuff.”

Still thinking of flying a Dreadnought, Andra didn't take a lot of notice – if Amarr was out they could always go and blow up somebody else, maybe those drifters his parents had been going on about. They would obviously not be much of a threat if they didn't have a home, but they might provide valuable target practice. He knew his dad was out on a mission for the Security Department at present – something about having to go to and rescue a girl called Eliza Damsel who was in a nightclub called Distress. Dad had said it was the third time this month and her father ought to be billed for the time and effort involved, but it would never happen as he was an important man in a State. But when he came back, they could have a serious grown-up discussion about Dreadnoughts...

“OK Danhi – we have a plan! I'm going to go and look into skill queues for capitals and get some dinner. I will see you later in Navigation Class and don't tell anybody else about this! We don't want them stealing our ideas!”

With a wave to his friend, Andra disconnected from the InGame 3D Channel Viewer and set off down the corridor, dreams of conquering the galaxy from the bridge of his Phoenix uppermost in his mind. It looked like it would be a good day after all!