A Story

The following is just something I’ve been doing in my spare time.
It follows a little bit of experience of a character I play on Eve Online.
It is neither done, nor do i expect it to be any semblence of “good”.
I’m trying out a new perspective when it comes to stories; If memory serves me well, i think it’s one of the 1st person views, i don’t remember exactly.

Here it is.

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Her neural synapses fired, time to wake up…

My neural pathways are slow, something must be wrong. I fully opened up the neural network and attempted to load up the interface to my pods systems.

Nothing.

Somethings wrong… I fumbled with my right hand along the wall, trying to reach the emergency release for my command pod. Stroking my fingers over the pad I orient my hand and type in the command.

9 4 C A C 0 1. Enter.

The pod began to hiss like and angry snake as it equalized the pressure of the pod to that of the outside. Finally it pops and the shell begins to open, all the while groaning in protest. It’s telling me it’s time for some maintenance, maybe later. The blue neon light of my command quarters begins to flood into the pod as the egg walls begin to open. Those blue lights always hit a soft spot in my heart. Bright enough to see what I need to, yet soft enough to not sting my sensitive eyes.

I was home.

No, not home. I have no home, not for a long while have I had a place that can be considered a home. A home is a place of warmth, of friends and of family. But this; this was a Tritanium box carved out of some small corner in a station lost within a universe of millions upon millions of similar structures. This was my little slice in this station though.

I glanced around my small quarters and noticed that my comm terminal was flashing an angry eye at me, someone was demanding my attention. What problem could there be for me to solve this time?…
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I reach up behind my head and pull on the little release lever to disconnect the neural connectors melding me with my ships.
HISS. POP. “Neural connectors have been disengaged. Please exit with caution.” Came the reply from my lovely on-board Aura AI. I slowly inched my way out of the form fitting chair. After several squirming side to side maneuvers to release myself from my pod, I softly glided down the retractable ladder; and crashed faced first to the ground. I hate wobbly legs.

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I slowly regain my posture, bracing myself on the railing nearby for support. After painfully stretching my legs hoping the pin needle pain would go away, and began to make my way to the refreshment station. After rummaging through the fridge I find a single can of Quafe soda in the back, cha ching! With my Quafe firmly in hand and my legs not in quite so much pain as before, I walk over to the console and plopped myself down at the chain and relaxed into the soft cushions.

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I stared at the angry eye blinking at me from the consoles screen, not really wanting to see what problem I’d have to fix for someone else. But alas, the work is always needed, and on the rare occasion entertaining.
“Aura, please display all recent job forms in order of date sent and reverse it to display the most recent first.”
“As you wish Captain. Processing. Complete. First message is from Melina Orgrasani,” replied Aura’s mechanically melodic voice.
“Bring it up on the main monitor please, and decrease the ambient lighting by 50%.
“As you wish.”
As the lights dimmed down to a soft blue glow in the room, I focused my eyes towards the main monitor and began to read the request from Melina. She always gives me good jobs. This request is particularly short for a Melina job, strange, but a nice change; short requests usually means short jobs, something that suites me just fine for now. As I smile thinking out the upcoming easy mission, it slowly begins to fade on my face. Melina isn’t offering me a job, she’s sending me to someone else who has one. Strange, Melina’s never been known to send me to someone else. Bricle Frestru is his name. The request doesn’t say what the job is either.
Now I’m fully awake and extremely intrigued. Whats so important that she can’t tell me over the request? As I think about it, this mission doesn’t sound to bad, the unknown is always fun! After glancing through the rest of my mail and not finding anything real interesting I finish the rest of my Quafe and head to the refresher to clean up and switch into a new jumpsuit. After squaring everything in my quarters away I move onto the real dilemma; what ship am I gonna use for this exciting and unknown adventure!

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I could take the Drake, it’s sturdy and it’s served me well over the years, but I might not
need that much firepower. Then again, what if I need more rather than less? Well, I could
always come back and change if needed I think as I stare out into my hanger, to my mechanical children.

The Drake, my Phoenix.

I do one last check to make sure the co-ordinents were transferred properly into my NavSat.
Then I walked over to the kitchen and bring out some cat food for my little girl, Samantha.
After that I begin to climb into my egg shell cocoon. Once the stinging pain of being
reconnected to the neural links fades, the hatch begins to slowly close, groaning and moaning the entire time. Yeah, they still hate me, but fixing it will have to wait till after the job.

I initiated the pod’s loading sequence, for a split second I can feel the motion of the pod
before the inertial dampeners fully engage as it moves down the loading tracks. After a few moments I get the green light that the pod has been successfully loaded into the Phoenix. A few more quick checks of the
systems, I do a quick peek of my drone compartment, full payload, excellent. All seven XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bays scanned and in the green, good. All point-to-point defence systems are online and ready to go. Secondary systems are all online and fully functional.
All systems engaged and ready to go. I begin the process to probe the stations Command and
Control Tower, no response. I bring up the comm systems screen and….. it’s offline!?

Whoops!

I knew I forgot something. After giggling at my own foolishness, I start up the comm system,
then repeat the process of probing the CCT. I then initiate the undocking cycle, and
I’m on my way!

After warping to the appropriate stargate, I proceed to the next gate, and so on and so
forth. This process goes on for several minutes, those minutes turn into hours…

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After a quick nap, or what could be considered a nap in such a position, I reengaged the
ships systems and began to plot a course away from the planetary orbit that I had myself in for my short rest. One last jump and I would be at the appropriate system for the meeting.

This last jump would also take me fairly deep into nul sec, the lawless land. Most people tend to stick to the “high sec” area which are patrolled and governed by a faction of “police” called CONCORD, because their afraid of venturing into lands that are controlled by no one. Not me. My ventures into such lands have, yes, been frought with danger at every turn; but that’s what made it such a great experience. Never knowing when your gonna find yourself in someones trap, or stumbling onto a few hardy pirates hanging about. It’s enough to get anyones heart pumping, and pumping fast!

I approach the gate and send the command to begin the jump process and get accelerated through the artificial wormhole that’s controlled by the Stargate. Once on the other side of the Stargate my external cameras and scanners come back online and the first thing that’s on my overview is a mess of ships not but 20 km from my current position. The scanners show them as various sized craft, two of them being carriers. But those were still well out of range of being a huge threat to me. But current threat are the ships at extreme range of me, and the Stargates cloak will only hide me for another minute. I quickly go through the options i have at hand. I could try and make a quick dash to align to my destination and hope that none of them have warp jammers equipped. But if these guys are here for a purpose, then they most certainly are fitted for anything. I’m to far away from the Stargate to hope to make a jump back before I was destroyed. I have a prototype cloak fitted in my secondary systems, but it’s never been tested before. But it seams to be the only option I have…

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