Prices

(This is a story I wrote. Read the post below first please.)

The man’s body presses down on mine, constricting my movement. I lock my leg around him, and try to reverse our positions, but the floor is slick with blood, and I cannot get any purchase. He tries to reach for something in his boot, and I snap an elbow into his briefly unprotected face. His hand scrabbles against my face. I have my arms locked around his chest, but I cannot find leverage. I feel his thumb press against my left eye. I bite down on his wrist, and he shrieks.

A golden sunlight field, stretching in all directions as far as he could see. There were no clouds, and the warmth poured down from the sky. He ran, as far as he could, with no cares. He did not know anything else, so he was happy. The feel of the stubbly furrows under his unshod feet, the whisper of the stalks against his outstretched arms, the heat of the sun on his face, it all meant home to him. Behind him, his family, working the land. Far in front of him, a woman, just back from market, with baskets in her hands. She is thin, with a delicate face, and sadness is visible in the lines around her eyes. She seems tired. Her clothes are simple, and flowing. She wears a collar around her neck. When she sees him, her face transforms into a beaming smile.

I slam my fist once more into his body, just under his ribcage, on his left side. He curls towards the blow, which allows me to drag my right hand from between our bodies. My left arm is numb from repeated impacts, my fingers tingling with pain. I am about to reach up and hook my hand in his face when he snaps his forehead into my nose. Pain blossoms, seeming to fill the universe, and my vision briefly goes white.

A huge vaulted chamber, of yellowish stone. To his young eyes, the ceiling seems to stretch upwards, perhaps into heaven itself. There are huge stained glass windows along each wall, the light spilling through them, illuminating incredible images of serene, wise men and caring, motherly women, brightly coloured, throwing patchwork shadows across the white marble floor. As he walks, he looks in all directions. It is all so new. Halfway, the enormous icons give way to towering pillars, coated with a golden metal. Between them are hung vast tapestries, each one easily the size of his childhood home. At the end of the cavernous chamber, almost dwarfed by the scale of it all, is a chair, simple, hand-carved from wood. He recognizes it, they told him once that his father had made it. In the chair sits a young man, confident, draped with silks and golden decoration, self-consciously toying with a simple silver band on his left middle finger. He looks at the boy, and his mother, and smiles. The boy knows that things will be different.

My mind clears. His forearm is pressing down against my throat, slowly choking me, while he digs his gloved fingers into my left wrist, preventing me from striking him. I cough, and spit blood onto his cheek. I feel a crackle in the joint, but the pain doesn’t make it through the haze of adrenaline. The weight on my neck seems infinite, though, and my vision begins to be encroached by a grey tunnel.

A shadowed vault, made from roughly hewn blocks. Simple wood shelves cover the walls. They are filled with books. He had never even seen one book before. He didn’t even know what they were for. In the centre, lit by a flickering lantern, is a desk, strewn with scrolls, tomes, and old, tattered pages. Hunched over it, a man, ancient looking, with a long flowing beard, and dressed in the simple garb of a hermit or a monk. He adjusts a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. He remembered, there was a bright red mark on the bridge of the old man’s nose, as if the adjustment was a nervous habit or a tick. He shuffles some parchments, then unrolls a scroll. He gestures at it to someone behind the boy. He turns, and behind him is the woman, and the confident young lord. The lord looks shaken and frightened, his face white. The woman’s eyes suddenly catch his, and his is filled with a feeling. “I love you. I will always love you.” The old man shakes his head, and a hand falls on the back of the boy’s neck, pushing his collar into his shoulders. He shouts something, a protest, a prayer, he can’t remember.

I can’t breath. I can’t see. I am about to give up, and go the rest of the way quietly. Suddenly, my grasping fingers settle on a handle. I explore it further. He had a small knife hidden on his back! I wrap my hand around it, and jerk it from it’s sheath. He feels the sudden tug, and the pressure on my breath is momentarily reduced as he twists about to see what is happening.

A small room, made from perfectly fitted blocks of smooth black stone. There are no windows, or decorations at all. Beside the simple steel door, the only interruption is a raised dias. Standing at the stage is the confident young lord. This time, his robes are red, and the ring, set with a large ruby, into which is carved a sigil. He struggles against the ties about his wrists and ankles, but they are too strong for his young limbs. The woman is lead onto the dias. She is dressed in gorgeous white linen robes, and wears a veil over her eyes. She seems limp, docile, like the drugged fowl he used to slaughter for the great feasts. His eyes fill with tears, but he shakes his head. He will not cry. He will not cry! His mother is lain across the altar, and the noble is handed a wicked knife. I WILL NOT CRY. I WILL LIVE!

The short blade of the knife disappears into his throat. We both stop. He looks at me incredulously, as though he doesn’t really believe what just happened. Red wells up around the sharpened spar of steel jutting from the half-shaven flesh of his neck. I pull the weapon out, and hot red blood sprays onto my face. He gurgles, tries to say something, but can’t. I plunge the knife into him again, and again. I will live.

And now for something...

Completely different. As anyone who used to follow this blog knows, I've kinda stopped posting. This is because I found that I had run out of things to write about in the narrow confines of the format I made for myself. Rather than repeat myself, endlessly, I just stopped. But I've been working on backstory and such for Raxip as a character, and I've written a little story. It's intentionally a little mysterious. Maybe I'll fill you all in later, maybe I won't =P. And keep in mind, this is my first real foray into writing actual fiction, so comments are in fact encouraged, to shore up the tatters of my fragile abused ego.

Rebuttal

As my Rifter’s computers began their full reboot, recovering from the confusion of jump gate travel, I took stock of the situation so far today. I’d spent the afternoon wandering through my usual haunts in Molden Heath, but absolutely nothing interesting had happened. I suppose everyone has days like this. It had been the same for much of the time yesterday, with one small exception. Normally the system of Half is outside my usual flight path, but yesterday I had decided to take a look around and see what I found. The area is dominated by a gang of do-gooders who go by the name of the “Shadows of Light” alliance, but I knew that most of them would be no match for a hardened warrior such as me. Sure enough, mere minutes after I entered system, I managed to blow another Rifter pilot out of space, under the bumbling gaze of a local defence force made up of several cruisers and a battleship. The kill itself was unimpressive, my foe having fit his craft to combat non-pod pilots, but the circumstances were what made it worth it. Today, however, the system seemed empty. Only a few pilots in the local comms, most likely docked up doing what ever it is white-hats do in their spare time. Still, it never hurts to check. I took a quick spin about the asteroid belts, hoping to find a straggler, but no such luck. I punched in the co-ordinates of the gate to Istotard, and hit warp.

As I landed on the gate, I sighed. Some days you get no luck. I had my hand on the command to hail the gate crew for immediate transport, but before I got the chance to finish my action, I saw the characteristic flash of light which indicates that someone has just been transported into system. I decided to give this place one more chance, and I brought up the local comms, checking for the new arrival. There was, of course, one, a pilot who went by the name of Vasavia. I knew her, having had an encounter with her about a week ago. She’d won, but I was pretty certain it was a fluke, myself having had a little too much to drink that night. Not that she was a bad pilot, I was just convinced I was better, as I almost always am. She was Shadows of Light, but unlike the rest of her organization, she seemed to actually have a pair of ovaries. This was good. She was holding her gate cloak, so I punched in a warp to a nearby asteroid belt, hoping she would get the hint and follow.

It wasn’t more than a few moments before I saw a Rifter appear on my long range sensors, and even less time before my sensors pinged, telling me that a vessel had just exited warp less than 3 klicks from mine. I quickly shouted orders to my crew, settling myself into an orbit approximately 5 kilometres from my foe, and painting her craft with my LADAR targeting suite. I activated my suite of combat modules, and disengaged the thermal safeties of my autocannons, pushing them past the manufacturer’s specifications. She responded in kind, and the fight was on. Swiftly, streams of nuclear death filled the space between our ships. I could tell she was using the standard cookie cutter setup for her craft, but mine was a little different, as I had filled the space normally containing a rocket launch system with an energy vampire, in order to steal my foes’ capacitor to run my modules for longer. This had been much more popular a few years back, before legal issues surrounding the patents forced manufacturers to limit the operation of the NOS modules, but they hadn’t been completely neutered. I knew that the added punch of the launcher would give her the advantage in sheer firepower, but if I held range, I could force the fight into distances where the inherent instability of the ammunition we fired would reduce the damage. This would allow me to capitalise on the greater staying power my nosferatu had given me.

Very rapidly, the multiple continuous detonations erupting about her craft overloaded the fragile shield projectors, and my cannons began to bite into the armour of her tough little craft. Almost simultaneously, however, an insistent warning light on my heads up display warned me of total system failure in my own shields, and my Rifter started to shake and lurch with the force of the Morphite explosives impacting my own hull. I activated my nanite repair modules, and watched the digital readout as the tiny robots clawed their way through my ship, converging at impact points to replace blackened craters with smooth tungsten. The repair systems were helping, but I wasn’t sure it would be enough. My sensors were telling me that although my weapons were in peak condition and my targeting systems were ably compensating for the contortions my helmsman and hers were putting our nimble frigates through, she was very good. This was going to be a very close fight, and I wasn’t certain of the victor if things continued as they were.

As my armour diagnostics reported 50% armour integrity, I knew I had only one more option available to me. I brought up the computer brains controlling my repair systems, and disengaged the safeties governing their operation. There was a certain amount of danger in doing this, as the increased speed and force of the nanites could damage and eventually even destroy my various protective measures, but for short times, the benefits outweighed the possible drawbacks, and repairs would still be much less expensive than replacing my craft.

The difference was very apparent. Almost immediately, my diagnostics systems reported that the damage incoming on my ship was nearly balanced out by the increased efficiency of my glowing green helpers. On the other hand, my opponent seemed not to be aware of this kind of modification, as her armour integrity dropped lower and lower, until my rounds finally began to blast hard radiation and concussive force into her very interior. She had set her systems up well, with protective internal force fields and redundancies, but it was no match for the fury of the 150mm cannon shells riding my LADAR guidance directly into the gaps in her defences, and Vasavia’s tough little Rifter quickly evaporated around her. It was an excellent test of my abilities as a warrior, however, and kudos to her for a fabulous duel, but to the victor goes the spoils.

I gathered up what undamaged equipment I could get from her wreck, and sent my craft to a safe spot to await the end of my global criminal countdown timer. It was always nice to find fresh blood flying in my home of Molden Heath, especially in a capsuleer as skilled as Vasavia seemed. I expected great things from her.

I'd like to thank the Academy...

In case you didn't already see it, I've been added to KrazyKinux's Eve Blogroll! This is very exciting, I now feel validated as a blogger. In all seriousness, though, thanks so much. I guess I'll actually have to start posting again, though, huh.

Oh, and a shout out from one Canadian Eve player to another! Thanks again.

Gods of Thunder

I looked about at the now very familiar vista of the Bosena system surrounding my ship. There had been a lot of activity in here earlier, so I Had been forced to stay low, but I was hoping to catch a straggler or two now that things had calmed down a little. I called a sensor report up to my main view screen, and checked my surroundings. According to my scanner, somewhere nearby there was three ships. First, a Hurricane class Battlecruiser, probably too much for my Rifter. Second, a Raven class Caldari Battleship, favoured by the dogs of the empire for killing non-pod pilots, probably deep in space running a mission. Finally, a Taranis class Interceptor. The Taranis is one of the few frigate-sized ships I’m not 100% comfortable engaging in my Rifter. Not only is it faster than my Rifter when fitted with afterburners, but it can also fit an appreciable amount of armour plating, and the Blasters it normally mounted were quite capable of pulverizing my Rifter into shreds of vapour at close range. Still, I knew that despite my poor record against them up to this point, which I believe was 0-4, I had a chance. If he fit a microwarp drive, I could easily use my afterburners to keep him at arms length where the rapid loss of shot cohesion would render his Blasters useless.

I began scanning all the known Celestials near the safe spot I was sitting at, and found him at the Stargate leading to Teonusude. I sighed, guessing that as usual, by the time I arrived, he would already be long gone, but engaged my warp drives anyway. Sometimes you get lucky. To my surprise, when my craft shot from the warp, he was in fact still inside the window of my mid-range sensors. I looked around and found him, sitting 40 km away, looting a wreck or some sort. After a second, he finished with it, and began to burn at high speed towards another. A burst of laughter slipped from me, his speed was much too great to be based on an afterburner. I might actually have a chance. I book marked the wreck he was aiming at, and dropped my ship into warp towards the nearby planet, while setting my navigation computer to automate an orbit at four and a half klicks, which should be more than enough to muffle the fury of his guns, while allowing mine to still apply enough damage to him to give me a chance at victory. The moment I arrived, I slammed the warp button again, directing me to the marked wreck.

As the space bubble collapsed from around my ship, allowing my sensors a look at my environment, it became clear that I had timed this perfectly. He was just arriving at the wreck, and I ordered my tactical officer to engage a targeting lock on my foe. I could not shoot him first, since that would Instigate the Empire defence sentries to make short work of my ship, but I knew that interceptor pilots are often cocky to the point of foolishness, and seeing a juicy T1 frigate piloted by an outlaw under his guns, he wouldn’t hesitate. I was right, and he locked me back and almost instantly opened up with all of his systems. I returned the favour, and the fight was on.

I knew that my greater speed due to my AB would let me prevail in the end, but he managed to fly into point-blank range in the opening moments of the engagement, and his stasis web was interfering with my engines, making my retreat to safer ranges a slow and terrifying experience. My guns were spraying fire into his shields, but in only two volleys, his powerful blasters filled with antimatter ammunition turned my unprotected defence field projectors into so much overheated slag smeared across the tungsten plates of my armour. His guns began to eat into my plates, and I knew that I probably could not stand up to this in the time it would take me to gain range. He had also released a pair of second generation Hobgoblin light scout drones, and while they were nothing as terrifying as the Minmatar Warrior class drone to a frigate pilot, they were adding their own appreciable fire to the torrent already splashing across my ship. My repair nanites were mitigating the damage to a certain extent, but they just couldn’t quite seem to keep up. This was the time to pull out my ace in the hole, and try something I’d never done before. I sent orders to my engineering crew to increase the power input to the repair systems, to about 125 percent. I knew I couldn’t keep this up for long, as the massive heat being built up in my systems would eventually shut down my modules, but I knew I if I could just weather the fire for a few more moments, I would be safe. Just as my armour integrity crept towards 0 and the fire started eating slowly into my well-protected hull, the Interceptor’s damage abruptly dropped out. Once I had settled into a comfortable orbit, already having stripped my foe of his shields, I ordered to also overload my guns, and the nuclear fire of my cannons bit deeply into his armour, vaporising large chunks with every volley. Molten steel began to bubble up through channels in his plates, carried by his own repair systems, but the screaming fury of my abused and overloaded autocannons was ripping his vessel apart far faster than it’s ability to heal, and at that point, the fight was quickly over, with the relatively light bulwarks of his nimble ship evaporating into a cloud of expanding gasses. I don’t think I’ll be in a hurry to engage further Taranises, seeing as how incredibly tough they are for their size, but it’s nice to finally be able to put a tick in the win column.

I Guess They Were French

As the gate bubble around my ship dissolves, I punch in the coordinates that will send my ship through the warp to the assistance of my CEO, Ozkar, and I shudder into maximum warp. As I decelerate into the asteroid belt, my sensors sweep about and tell me who I’m sharing it with. The first thing I see is floating wreckage, and a moment of frustration passes through me, but then I see Oz and his Jaguar sitting calmly right beside the blasted shell of a Hulk class mining Barge. We scoop what loot we can together, and as we warp to a safe spot to wait out his criminal flag, I ask him what exactly happened, and why he didn’t wait. He explained that moments after he engaged the Hulk, a squadron of Fighter craft from a nearby allied carrier had appeared from warp, so he had finished the hulk quickly and prepared to flee. However, once the Hulk they were protecting was dead, they didn’t seem interested in revenge, and simply left. But that wasn’t the strangest thing about the fight. It appears that the Hulk pilot had fitted powerful warp stabilizers on his craft, preventing Oz’s propulsion jamming from operation, but the pilot still did not warp out and died in his ship.

As we sit in the safespot, laughing about this, I notice the local comms channel demanding attention. I check, and see the pilot we just attacked and his friends saying some very rude things in local, but in Gallentean, I suppose in the hopes that we wouldn’t know what they were saying. Luckily for us, I speak fluent Gallentean after my year as a refugee on one of their planets, and translate for my CEO.

As we banter back and forth, my long range scanners start picking up a small signature nearby, and my technician quickly resolves it down to a Caldari Hawk-class Assault Frigate, probably flown by one of the pilots we just offended with our attack. Oz and I take a moment to confer, and we decide that I will hunt this ship in the asteroid belts and lock it down so that Oz’s much more powerful Jaguar can come and kill it. I engage my warp drives, and fly to the third belt, where I saw the Hawk last, but when I exit warp he is nowhere to be found. As I begin scanning down each belt in turn, I load the powerful but extremely short range EMP ammunition into my guns. It may not have the extended reach of the rocket assisted multi-warhead Barrage rounds I usually load, but the devastating lightening bolt of energy it releases upon impact will cut through the Caldari’s foolish preference towards shields like nothing else.

Finally, I get a solid sensor reading at a belt, and my warp drive hurtles me to his location. I exit the warp no more than 3 klicks from the other ship, and targeting systems stab out from both craft. As my computer feeds me the clean tone of a good lock, the brackets about my enemy suddenly flash from yellow to red, indicating that not only has he locked me as well, he has also aggressed me in the eyes of Concord. Both of our combat systems activate, and I punch in an orbit at five hundred metres from him. For the first few seconds he seems faster than my Rifter, which is very strange, but once I activate my advanced afterburner systems, my ship gains substantial advantage and I leap to once again close the range between us. Once settled into a comfortable orbit, I signal to my backup, and engage my autocannons. I don’t expect to be able to break through his powerful defensive systems by myself, because if there is one thing the Caldari know how to do, it is build shields for their ships, and for it’s size, the Hawk will have some of the most powerful. To my surprise, however, the blinding blue flashes of artificial lightening created by my shells are stabbing deep into him, and a glance at my deep sensor readout, showing his probable defensive integrity, reveals that my guns are rapidly peeling layer upon layer of his defences away with ease.

As I notice this, however, my CEO’s craft bursts from the warp onto the scene. I send him a message asking to wait, because I want to see how much of this my little craft is capable of on its own. By the time I’m finished with my comms, there is a crackle of energy from the other ship and the rest of his shield relays and projectors evaporate into space, overheated by the strain of sustaining power while my guns shattered them. I think to myself that perhaps this is some strange experimental Hawk with heavy armour plating, but the armour seems to fall just as fast as his shield, if not faster. Before the enemy craft falls completely, I tell Oz to fire a shot into his structure to so that concord will include him on the mail. After all, we are a team. Very quickly it is all over, and the Hawk, under the fury of two sets of powerful cannons explodes into a ball of nuclear light, causing my view screen to darken momentarily.

We warp away together back to our safe spot, and look at the kill mail sent by Concord, and a shock awaits us. The Hawk had been fitted with incredibly expensive modules made by the Angels and Serpentis corporation, worth something over one hundred million isk in total. We immediately leap back towards the belt where we got the kill, and the wreck is still there. Wonderfully, when we examine it, we find that half of the equipment was not destroyed in the blast, and we scoop it up. And who says crime doesn’t pay?

Close, But No Cigar

My ship burst from warp to the asteroid belt, and a quick glance at my sensor readout showed that the other Rifter was still there, only 5 klicks from my own. Immediately, the microwave lasers of my targeting systems stab out and painted my target with the glow of an active sensor lock, enabling my tracking computer to guide my guns to their target. I kick my combat modules into activation and as blue waves of energy fly from my craft to interfere with his drives, my own engines scream into the red with the force of my advanced afterburners. I settle into a comfortable 4 klick orbit around my opponent, far enough out that his earlier-model weaponry has difficulty reaching my ship. The whirring of my Autocannons cycling into life is almost impossible to hear over the roar of my drives, but the thunder of their battle cry cuts through all other lesser sounds.

My Rifter, the Baying of the Hounds, will have little trouble with this lesser foe. His shielding has already evaporated under the fury of my ACs, and I bite deep into his unresisting armour. His own firepower is barely managing to land a few paltry scores into the tungsten plates surrounding my craft, but what little harm they do is mitigated by the roiling green nanobot soup flowing from reservoirs and knitting new plating atop the damage. Just as the nuclear fire of my own weaponry begins to cut through his plating and stab into the bulkheads and systems of his ship, I see a new foe on my scan. It is a Rupture class Cruiser, one of the most deadly cruisers I would ever have the misfortune of facing. Worse, it is piloted by a Capsuleer of the same corporation as my first target. The Rupture is still 40 klicks from the fight, and I am certain that I can dispatch my first target before it comes within range of the electronic warfare systems necessary to catch and hold my craft.

I cross my fingers within the bubbling green goo of my pod, and as my heart thunders in my chest, the thunder of my cannons continues to shred my enemy. I find my self counting down the range to Actylla’s Rupture. If it gets within 24km, the of the advanced warp disruptors his ship probably fits, it is all over for my craft. Though my original enemy poses little threat to me, my capacitor is already sorely taxed from running full combat systems for the duration of this fight, and the nearly full flight of Warrior II drones The Cruiser has already released from his ship can easily rip my ship into vapour and floating shrapnel. As my count reaches 25km, the pounding of my heart seems to drown out everything else. A warhead launched from my 150mm Autocannons finds a gap in the other Rifter’s already melted and torn armour, flying true into the centre of his warp drive. The resulting detonation turns his ship into nothing but an expanding cloud of gasses.

Just as the Rupture’s drones speed out to make mincemeat of me, I lurch towards the course already set into my navigation computers, my warp drive shrieking as I exit to freedom. I breathe out, realizing I had been holding my breath, and allow myself a smile of satisfaction. Next time perhaps Actylla will remember to align his ship to his bait instead of the celestial body it is located at. However, this time the day is mine.