My punisher floated in the black. A stroke of lighting thousands of miles long arced across the surface of the planet below, catching my attention for a moment. Nature was furious, and fury is almost always beautiful. So long as you are well out of range.
I refocused my attention on the directional scanner. One ship, another punisher.
“Aura, decrease the scan sweep to 180,” this was pointless, I knew where he was. “Scratch that Aura, scan sweep at 5 degrees, center on the Heydelies gate. My instincts had been correct. I stared at the scanner, my ship aligning to the gate at my subconscious command.
“Shall we initiate a warp?” Aura’s voice broke my trance. “Uh, no. No, Aura let’s get away from this gravity well.” My ship realigned and moments later the planet faded away into a point, and then further, into nothing. When she came to rest nothing was visible save the ever-present sea of stars.
“Give me a 360,” the results leaping onto my scanner before I had finished the command. Speaking to Aura was a complete waste of time, as her AI was integrated into my own brain, but old habits die hard. My decision had been a good one, a Helios was now visible in system. A hunch revealed that it was sitting in orbit of the planet I had just left. They knew I was here.
“Let’s get off the beaten path then, shall we,” I said as my ship aligned to a location, deep in the void, that I had bookmarked for just such an occasion. If they had probes it wouldn’t matter, they’d find me eventually, but by then I’d be gone. “Aura, monitor local chatter, and check the station logs in system, see if you can find him, we don’t have much time.”
I sat back and primed my e-cig, waiting for the results to come back and reflecting on the events that got me here to begin with. Only a few minutes ago I was flying back to my corporate headquarters in Charmerout.
I despise working for the Gallente, but the checks clear and given my interesting state of affairs, they’re one of the few states that will employ me. Anyway, apparently the Gallente state had received intel on some rogue drone infestation in Yvangier and I was the lucky one given the job of cleaning up their mess. I also hate drones. Never mount a gun on a machine that can think for itself. Anyway, it was an easy job and paid well.
On my way back to Charm I saw a rifter waiting on the Charm side of the gate. My instinct kicked in, he was spotting, but I was the wrong side of lowsec. I docked, collected my pay and climbed into my catalyst. It was a stupid idea, I knew I’d be marked, and armed with nothing but salvagers and tractor beams I wouldn’t even be able to retaliate. I went anyway, I was heading to a deadspace area, if they had the skill to scan me down there, despite the raging astronomical anomalies then they deserved their chance at me.
I arrived back at the deadspace site a few minutes later and began my work of towing in and cleaning up the wrecks that I had so recently made. I was there for a few minutes, alone and unhindered, and then a rifter appeared on my scanner. A few moments later it initiated a target lock, but by then my catalyst had already begun to enter warp. I should have been dead.
He had made two mistakes. First he was slow, an inexcusable mistake. He should have had my propulsion systems locked down. The catalyst is not known for it’s grace, and in this particular case I’d gutted a large portion of the propulsion systems to fit a larger cargo bay. Second, and this was an honest mistake, he had assumed I was inexperienced.
Anyone capable of scanning me down so close to a cosmic anomaly was experienced enough to have run a background check on me and noted that I graduated from the Imperial War Academy less than a month ago. An easy target. The graduation part is true, the date is not. I graduated from the academy 6 years ago, flew for the imperial navy, and the state navy, founded an ran a mercenary corporation for nearly 2 years. But that was before the incident, and those records were gone, lost to the void.
I docked my catalyst and climbed into my punisher, having Aura assist in ship preparations to speed things along. If he wanted a fight, he’d have one. He was a capsuleer, that much I knew, so his existence wasn’t at stake. It would be a training exercise, we would both learn something from the exchange, and it had been a long time since I’d had someone’s pod under my guns. Not since before the incident.
A chill ran down my spine.
“He’s not here madame, his rifter is not in space and his no stations logs report his ship docking. Several members of his corporation are in system, however, including the two on scan.” Aura’s voice pulled be back to the present. I ran another scan, the Helios was gone, but I could see it’s probes. They were looking for me. “He likely exited Yvangier to Heydelies. Shall we pursue?”
I considered the option for a moment, as the ship aligned to the Heydelies gate, subconsciously. I sat back and took a long deep breath, my mind was scattered, scared, and tired. Another scan, the probes were getting closer.
“No, Aura. Take us home, I’m sure we’ll run into him again, and I have no business with his corp mates.”
As I climbed out of my pod at Endland headquarters, I still felt cold. It had been 3 years since I had been in a space, with nothing but the thin shell of a pod between me and the cold harsh void. Scars take time to heal, I recited to myself.
Once in the safety of my quarters I retrieved the old dusty box from the corner and began shuffling through the old training cards I had recovered from my academy days. I located the one I wanted and inserted the tiny card into the Aura port behind my right ear. “Aura, upload this protocol and pause the current neural remap. We need to work on my memory.”