Category Archives: Aura Log

The public section of Ghenna’s aura-log journal, consisting of recorded impressions of recent events as well as glimpses of recovered memories.

The Big Leagues

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The pair of Machariel orbited my Abaddon gracefully, raining volley after volley of white hot laser energy onto my armor. My shields had failed some time ago. Meanwhile my bank of mega pulse lasers were having a difficult time breaching its shields. 30 kilometers away another pair of Machariel sent swarms of kinetic missiles crashing into my hull.

“Aura how are we holding up,” I asked, focusing my attention on my swarm of light drones, and commanding them to finish off the last of the nimble frigates that held my massive battleship in a stasis field.

“Armor is falling slowly,” came the reply, “but the capacitor is failing, we have about 5 minutes.”

Damn, it’s sheilds were at 50%. I gave the order to cease fire momentarily and switch the capacitor hungry multifrequency crystals out for standards. The machariel’s shilelds pulsed to 55%, 60%… the few seconds to reload seemed like eons. Then the sky lit up as my 8 pulse lasers began to pummel its shields again. My ship jerked into motion as the frigate exploded, sending shrapnel skittering across the forward bow.

“Recall the drones,” I said, to no one in particular as I mentally gave the command to recall the hobgoblins. They sped back into my open drone bay, and immediatley afterwards a swarm of Hammerheads emerged and swarmed around my target. Its sheilds were at 30% and stable, it was in the sweetspot for shield recharge. I shut down the guns again and switched back to multifrequency. Five minutes, I thought, let’s make them count.

The combined effort of my bank of pulse lasers and the medium scout drones began eating away at the machariel’s shields, and at 15% its shields began to fall rapidly. Without the considerable protection of its shield systems my lasers quickly tore through its armor and hull, the explosion sending chunks of hull crashing into my already worn armor plating. With one of the four out of the fight I checked my armor, 40%.

“Aura give me an update on the armor and cap.” I commanded the Abaddon to approach the other Machariel, and it responded as nimbly as an elephant, with no legs, that is also dead. “Christ this thing is slow!”

“Capacitor is at 2 minutes, armor is stable and rising.”

I smiled, “switch to standard crystals, we have all day,” and sat back in my pod.

“With the munition change capacitor is stable at 50%.”

“Thank you Aura,” I replied, though I already knew the information.

Twenty minutes later I was storming down a corridor in the Carthum Conglomerate Warehouse where I had been stationed. Entering the lobby of suite 3287 I stormed toward the back office.

“Hello, can I help you? – I’m sorry but he’s asked not to be dist-”

I stormed into the office.

“Recon mission my ass! You had better start talking now before I shove the smoking hull of my battleship up your-”

My agent had leaned forward, offering me a data sheet. “I assume those numbers are to your liking?” He sat back in his chair.

I perused the sheet, listing my pay and the bounties he had negotiated for me for the machariel.

“It’s all been deposited in your account, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes, tomorrow,” I replied, trying to remain angry and upright. I headed back to the hangar.

The deck crew was busy reparing the damage to my ship. “Listen up,” I shouted over the buzzing of repair drones, “I want another large rep fitted and I want it cap stable.”

“Cap stable?” it was the lead tech, buzzing over toward me on a hover crane, “We can fit another rep, but you can’t be serious about the cap. That’d be insane, if it’s even possible. Do you have any idea how much that’ll cost?”

I looked down at the data sheet, still cluched in my left hand.

“Money won’t be a problem, make it happen. I need to go talk to my insurance agents.”

Respect the Drones

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My punisher hung in space over Aice I, 15km from the thorax, as we had agreed. I had been called away from my new day to day duties, overseeing production security at the Carthum factory to demonstrate frigate vs cruiser tactics to some of our new recruits. If it had been a real fight I wouldn’t have been concerned, but I had agreed not to shoot at my opponent’s drones, a dire mistake in these sorts of fights. I double checked my systems.

“Okay, we fight to the hull,” I said over corp com, “remember to pull your drones off of me after it’s over.” It would be exciting in any case.

“3… 2… 1… Engage!”

I pushed my punisher to full speed and began to spiral in toward the cruiser as it launched a flight of hammerheads and sent them speeding toward me. I gave a sigh of relief, I could handle hammerheads for a while. I hoped they’d have trouble tracking my speedy ship.

At 9km I pushed for a direct approach, and realized my mistake as his railguns sheared off the majority of my shields. “Damnit, too soon.” Hesitation would get you killed, and impatience was no less serious an error, but the mistake had been made and moments later my punisher had settled into a tight 1500m orbit. My medium pulse lasers already tearing through his shields.

The fight was now between me and the drones swarming about my ship, the thorax’s railguns completely useless against my fast orbiting ship. I activated my scrambler for good measure, just incase he had a microwarp drive, and sat back, monitoring my my ship’s armor.

It was a long fight, owed largely to my opponent’s armor repair skills. I hadn’t bothered to mount a repair unit, forgoing it for my usual armor resistance plating and a healthy amount of extra plate. After a few minutes my pulse lasers hit hull and I disengaged, my ship at 15% armor.

“See what I mean about tracking problems? But wow, those hammerheads did a lot better than I thought they would. Good fight,” I said over com. We had all learned valuable lessons.

Several spars later I retired to the corporate headquarters to park my frigate and head back to Amarr space. The exercise was welcome, though, and great fun all around. As my pod mounted in my travel executioner I smiled, pleased at the quality and willingness to learn of our new recruits.

I had picked a good time to come back to the sky.

Security Breach

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The space lanes were quiet in Empire. “Ten more jumps Aura, thank God for that.” I urged the massive hull of the bestower into alignment with the next in a what seemed like a never ending series of gates, gave the command to power up the warp engines, and turned my attention back to the GalNet news. Recruitment was going slowly but generally well, and the normally quiet corp com was buzzing with activity, though nothing that needed my attention. I manifested a neural intention to monitor the channels in the background and continued to peruse the news as the industrial, laden with the last of my necessary personal effects pushed into warp.

“So, the combat hanger is empty at the Aice branch.” It was our very new but very friendly branch manager for the Aice office.

The word combat catching my intention filter, I brought the corp com into my attention buffer and rambled out a reply, “no problem, I’ll put an order for additional munitions when I get settled,” and moved the channel back into the periphery.

“Okay. Vinum stole everything from combat. He sent me a message that said LOL.”

I closed my connection to GalNet and put full attention on the corp channel, “Seriously? Why? There was nothing in there but some useless loot from the two rank three missions we flew yesterday and a couple thousand rounds of Iridium S.” I’d taken the newer members, who were mostly miners fresh out of the academy, to see what a decent rank combat mission looked like. As none of them had the ability to salvage, I took care of the salvage and let the Aice people take the loot to begin stocking their combat hangar. There was nothing of value in the hangar, even if they sold it all in a trade hub the return would barely buy net enough isk to afford an unfit Tristan.

“Yeah, I don’t know, but it’s all gone and Vinum is in the process of dropping corp.”

I shook my head, it barely qualified as theft, as the rules were that anything not locked down in the combat hangar was free to anyone with access. Still it was a breach of security, and especially for the sake of our new branch manager, it needed to be taken seriously.

“Okay, I’ll handle it. We’ll keep an eye on him and let any other corps he joins know he’s an opportunist,” I shook my head again, “we were going to buy him a mining barge for God’s sake, he could have at least waited for that before running off.”

“It’s not a problem, it was a trust test and he failed. Anything useful was locked down in General or in one of the secure hangars.”

I smiled. We had picked the right person for branch manager. I brought the R&D department com into focus, “Hi guys, we need another couple thousand rounds of iridium for the Aice branch when you have some time.”

“Wow,” came a delayed response, they were obviously busy over there, “for a bunch of miners they burn through ammo pretty fast.”

“Yeah, something like that,” I smiled.

“Okay, we’ll have someone ship some over when we get a free moment.”

I closed the com and focused back on my ship, 5 jumps to go before arriving at my new temporary home in Pimebeka. New Eden was full of con-men, scammers and opportunists, that was a given. I had just assumed that they were a bit more patient… and ambitious. He’d probably fade into the background, as so many of these small time thieves do, or end up scraping out a living in low-sec shooting haulers and tourists. To each their own.

And Vinum if you ever need some more free ammo, we are happy to oblige.

Time to Completion

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My executioner slipped out of cloak at 3000 meters per second. The skies of Pimebeka were comforting. I was home.

Entering the Tash-Murkon region, seeing the sky change suddenly from the cool green of essence to the deep peach of the Amarr empire sent a shockwave of memory and fear through my brain. My ship shuddered for a brief moment, and I was back in control. The focus training had helped.

I docked at the Carthum factory and once out of my pod took the mag elevator to the R&D level. The freight elevator shuddered as the inertial dampers powered up. Shoddy Carthum factories, I thought as I checked the biometrics monitor on my portable neocom, guess that’s how they keep prices down. The elevator itself was little more than a metal box contained within an open lattice of girders and magnets. It was essentially a rail-gun, with the elevator as the bullet and I was inside. At the speed we were traveling one trajectory deviation would mean a quick ride back to Charmerout, assuming my neocom caught the breach. I checked my neocom again, just to be sure.

The lift came to an abrupt stop, the dampers lessening the jolt significantly but not completely, and the doors slid open with a metalic squeal. It had been a long time since I set foot on a factory floor. It was always breathtaking.

Before me was the skeleton hull of an Apocalypse, enormous like God’s hammer. A thousand drones swarmed about the hull like flies around the caracas of some great beast. In this case, of course, instead of decaying the carcas was being assembled, reborn. Tritanium dust rained from the hull as the drone swarm cut, bent and welded the components into place.

“A person is just a constellation of dust from the stars,” the old childhood poem rolled off of my lips unexpectedly as I walked past the great hull toward the managment offices, “blown by the winds of creation…”

“But Amarr are made from dust chosen by God, and his breath alone is what guides them,” continued a voice from behind me. I turned to see a young Khanid woman, beautiful in the way Khanid often are. She approached me, and tucking a handfull of datasheets beneath her left arm extended her right to shake my hand. “I assume you’re Ghenna, I’ve been expecting you.”

I started to salute, and then stopped myself and shook her hand. Old habits die hard. “Yes, I’ve been sent by corporate to deliver some blueprints and datacores, they are being offloaded now. I’ll stay to see that everything is in order.”

“I’m sure that isn’t necessary,” she replied, shuffling through her datasheets. “Though we do appreciate your dedication to security.” She found whatever she was looking for and offered the datasheet to me, “please, have a look.”

It was a real-time construction status on an Abaddon. It was at 45% completion.

“That is a very nice ship,” I said, handing her the datasheet.

“That’s your ship,” she replied, shuffling the Abaddon datasheet back into it’s proper place in her bundle. Corp is setting up a branch office in Amarr space, and with the Gallente office doing well, it seems most appropriate for you to oversee defense out here, at least until we get on our feet.

I didn’t know what to say, it was a very nice ship, easily the biggest I’d ever piloted. Even in my navy days I’d never flown anything larger than a cruiser. An Abaddon as well, the ship had been a rumor whispered about in dark corners in those days.

“Thank you madame,” I stammered, “I’ll make good use of it.” I saluted instinctively. She giggled.

“You’re not in the navy soldier, no need for all that. We have some tachyons we rolled off the assembly line this morning, they should be in your hangar within the hour. A bit different from what you’re used to I imagine, but with your expertise in gunnery I suspect you’ll get up to speed in short order.”

“Yes madame,” I fought the urge to salute, “I should head back to Charm then, and get my effects in order.”

“Very good, we have everything under control here,” she said tapping on one of her datasheets, “And call me Afwal.”

“Yes mad- Afwal. And thank you.” She nodded, and I turned to head back to my ship.

“And Ghenna,” I turned to look at her, the small Khanid woman standing calmly while a thousand drones swarmed behind her sending sparks and dust raining from the massive Apocalypse hull, now noticeably more complete than it had been only minutes ago.

“Welcome home.”

Awakening

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Fuzzy sat across from me in his usual velvet-lined chair, smoking his pipe and appearing as aloof as a furrier in a waistcoat could appear. We sat in silence for some time.

“Tell me about your death,” he finally said, wiggling his nose a bit. I clenched my teeth at the question. I knew it would come up, but didn’t expect it this soon.

“Capsuleers die all the time,” I began, “the first time is scary, but you get used to it. You wake up in your clone, throw a bit of profanity around for a while and then get on with it.” I was avoiding the question, we both knew that.

“Waking up,” I continued, “that’s the metaphor most people use, and it’s pretty accurate. A moment of disorientation and then you’re somewhere else millions of miles away, a bit groggy from the meds. Just waking up. That time,” I felt my face cringe involuntarily. “Last time I didn’t wake up, I was reincarnated. It was nothing like waking up.”

Fuzzy cocked his head to one side and took a deep drag on his pipe, urging me to continue.

“One moment I was a speck of nothing being eaten by an infinite expanse of nothing,” I hesitated, searching for a better metaphor to describe it, eventually giving up. “Anyway, the next moment I was in a tank, but I was still dead, still dying.”

Still screaming.

“I didn’t know who I was, where I was, what was happening. I know now, of course, but I think most of that was after the fact. In that moment I was reborn,” I paused, caught my breath, “Waking up is that slow peaceful urging to consciousness. That time it was violent, quick, terrible.”

Snatched from death by sharp talons.

Fuzzy removed the pipe from his tiny mouth. “When was it that you remembered who you were?” It was not an easy question.

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ve ever remembered. The Caldari, they got the scan off, they brought me back,” I swallowed hard, it was more difficult than I had imagined. “Whoever I was, I’m not that anymore, not all of it anyway. They didn’t bring all of me back. There are pieces out there, still screaming silently in the cold.” I paused for a moment and took a deep breath, “losing memories is one thing, people forget things all the time. But it’s not like forgetting, it’s like having a hole where a memory once was. Emotionally you still have some connection to that void, but as hard as you try there’s just nothing there.”

Fuzzy leaned foward, “what about your soul? Surely you’re more than just memories? How does your soul get from one clone to another?”

The age old question. I had annoyed my tutors with the same question for years in theology lessons. I didn’t know the answer. I don’t suspect anyone does. “I don’t know,” I said honestly, “but sometimes I feel like I left part of my soul out there.” It was a terrifying thought.

“I wouldn’t worry,” he said sitting back and putting the pipe back between his lips. “In my view, souls are the universe’s memories, and the universe doesn’t forget. Be patient, your missing pieces will find their way home. Maybe it’s time you went back to visit Amarr. Maybe give them less distance to travel?”

His words struck me simultaneously as idiotic and profound, but he was right. It was time to go home.