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.

Taboo

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Our footsteps resounded through the great marble halls. I struggled to keep up with Omar, taking three paces for each of his long graceful strides. I was six years old.

“Did you enjoy your outing today Ghen?” He was the only one I knew that did not call me by my full name.

“Yes, very much Mr. Omar Sir,” after months I could still not simply refer to him as Omar, despite his urging. My father’s hard lessons on politeness had cut deeply.

“My favorite was the big bird. It was so scary. I’m going to fly one day, my father told me.”

“Indeed,” he slowed his pace and smiled warmly at me, “will you be as deadly as the Aukrom?”

I frowned, “No, I could never be that scary.”

Omar smiled and resumed his usual pace.

“Why do they fight? The people I mean, not the animals. Are they angry?” it was an innocent question.

He stopped walking and looked away from me. After a few moments I heard him take a deep breath and he turned and crouched down to my height. He pushed my hair back out of my face.

“The Matari fight because they are told to Ghen. They must do what they are told. Your way of life, all of this,” he waved his hands about the marble halls, “depend upon that.”

“I wouldn’t fight those animals,” I said, “even if you told me to.”

He smiled a troubled smile, “Of course not dear, and no one would ask you to. You are a child of Amarr, you have the light inside you. As long as you keep the light only God is your master.”

“God and Empire,” I recited.

“No!,” his voice was strained, almost angry, “Only God.” Omar stood up to his full height. I looked up at him.

“Can the Matari have the light. I don’t even think about mine except on Sundays, I could share.”

His face brightened and he smiled, “That is very nice of you, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. They have to find their own light.” He turned and began to walk, “Come dear, your Father wants you home for dinner. I hear you’ll be having guests from the empire,” he glanced at me playfully, “there might even be a pilot or two there.”

We raced the rest of the way home.

An hour later, at dinner I offered a prayer to the Matari, that they might find the light and be released from their bonds.

My clone no longer bears the scar left by my father’s belt, but the sting is still there.

I never saw Omar again.

Corporate Politics

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Running missions for the Gallente is perhaps one of the more boring endeavors I have ever undertaken. In the old days of Red Cabal I ran a combat crew, we fought things, we defended mining ops and hired out to corps who needed a bit more firepower. Now I mainly do work for the Gallente, doing my part to improve Endland’s federation standing and managing the day to day affairs of the corporate trade account. It’s a desk job, and while I’m not too happy about it, it has been a great help in replenishing my accounts.

But I hear we are recruiting, and that makes me happy. Endland’s recruiting policy has always been to recruit fresh out of the academy. It’s a policy that served the corp well for a long time, and I can see the advantages. Loyalty is the most important quality of an employee, and in my own corporate endeavors I’ve found that training someone from an academy recruit to a veteran combat pilot is a great way to foster loyalty. The downside, of course, is that such recruits are long-term investments.

So now, in addition to my responsibilities as trade director, I’ve been given the dubious honor of being chief of security. Currently that means I have control over an under-stocked combat hangar and can give orders to myself. If recruitment goes well, however, it’ll mean that I’ll be training a fresh wing of combat pilots to protect corporate assets, make trouble in our local neighborhood and generally populate low-sec Gallente space with wrecks. Good times all around.

Screams

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It was too cold for fear. The emptiness of space, and the shattered remnants of my capsule hung spinning in space around me. Those who have never had the experience would have you believe that a quick death is somehow more merciful, less terrifying. In that sense the cold vacuum is a merciful executioner, but quick is subjective. For the executioner the axe is faster than the rack, for the executed all death is the same duration.

Nanoseconds passed like eons. The cold seeped in like fire at first, the pain was momentary and then there was only terror. Memories flashed into my mind, half-formed recollections. I could feel each of them freeze and fade. The cold worked methodically. First the exterior  -memories, intelligence, thought- those things that make us human until only the interior brain -fear, anger, terror-  remained.

A thousand tiny crystals of ice wisped spinning from my frozen lips, within each one a scream of terror that could shatter suns, if nature would allow them to be heard. My vision stopped, I was a point of freezing consciousness in a vast expanse of nothing. I had entered the true void.

And then the cold subsided and was replaced by searing heat. The blackness rushed away in a burst of blinding light. I could feel my heart throbbing in my chest. I was underwater, struggling, my muscles aching.

I was in a clone vat. I was still screaming.

Noisy Neighbors II

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My agent had sent me once again into Yvangier to deal with someone else’s problem. This time he had received some intel on a Mordu operation taking place in a deadspace pocket. My job was to go over and make the whole operation a fused slag heap. I excelled at these sorts of jobs.

My new Harby was performing well, despite some early hiccups. I had fitted it for destruction and, despite my trepidation, fitted it with a flight of Hammerhead drones to deal with smaller ships. My Gallente friends had assured me that I should just focus on the bigger ships, my drones would “Murder any frigate that got close.”

Murder was perhaps not the appropriate word. Annoy, might have been a better term, and after sitting for 10 minutes waiting for a lucky shot from one of my heavy pulse lasers while my drones orbited an elite cartel frigate and made angry noises at it, I decided it best to switch out two of my heavies for mediums, at least until my drone skills were up to Gallente murder standards.

I arrived at the deadspace pocket and surveyed the situation.  There were a lot of ships here, this would take some time, but my scans and checks had assured me that I was alone in the local system, so I went to work making modern art of the ships in range.

Doing anything in Yvangier is an exercise in paying attention. In addition to the steady influx of Mordu, Angel Cartel and Gurista activity it was the home of the Blood Money Boot Camp, a training school for budding pilots on the other side of the law, and nearby Heydelies and Old Man Star were almost always war zones. So I was immediately aware of an Imicus entering the system as I was just finishing the last few Mordu.

“Aura, give me a 360 at maximum range.” Combat probes as suspected, and being that there were only two of us in system I suspected she wasn’t scanning herself. “360 Aura, at 1 AU. I want real-time updates.” It was another five minutes before the probes appeared on my scanner, and shortly after the Imicus. But she hadn’t found me yet, just the edge of my deadspace pocket. I congratulated her on her scanning skills as my ship jumped back to Charmerout.

I docked and the robotic deck crew transferred my pod to my Maller. I had no intention of salvaging the sea of wrecks that I had made, it was more the principle of the matter. “Okay Aura, let’s go shoot at the neighbors.” In a few minutes I was sitting at the first acceleration gate leading into the deadspace pocket. Moments later I was locking the scavenging pirate, now in a rifter, picking over my recent kills.

She was still at 20km, but began to spiral in using her speed as an advantage. A wise tactical move, though I didn’t much care. I had no intention of activating my pulse lasers until she got close, and she would. I commanded my ship to move straight at her. As she got closer I found myself webbed and scrambled, I returned the scramble, but kept my web offline. I wanted her a bit closer, no point in making it take any longer than it had to.

A 3,000 meters I webbed her and we both opened up with our guns. It was a tough little ship, tougher than I had expected. And was outputting very good damage. I was impressed. Had I brought my trusty punisher I would have been concerned, but the Maller was a rock and her ship exploded shortly after her auto-cannons began to scratch my armor. I quickly initiated a lock on her pod, but she made it into warp quickly, a testament to her survival skills and my cruiser class targeting system.

It was a good fight, I commended her on the local com channel for her durability as I rummaged through what was left of her ship. 400mm armor plates, no rep, aux power core to support the guns. Fly reckless, I thought, damn right. I left her wreck alone and headed back to Charmerout. She’d be back, but I didn’t want the loot anyway, and somewhere deep inside I had a vested interest in keeping her rifter supply well stocked.

2009.05.04 01:05:00

Victim: Jeneral Jane

Corp: Blood Money Bootcamp

Alliance: Blood Money Cartel

Faction: NONE

Destroyed: Rifter

System: Yvangier

Security: 0.4

Damage Taken: 2454

Involved parties:

Name: Ghenna (laid the final blow)

Security: 0.9

Corp: Endland

Alliance: NONE

Faction: NONE

Ship: Maller

Weapon: Medium Pulse Laser I

Damage Done: 2454

Destroyed items:

Barrage S, Qty: 146 (Cargo)

Republic Fleet EMP S, Qty: 708 (Cargo)

Damage Control II

Small Nosferatu I (Cargo)

Foxfire Rocket, Qty: 440 (Cargo)

250mm Railgun I (Cargo)

Micro Auxiliary Power Core I

Medium Proton Smartbomb I (Cargo)

125mm Gatling AutoCannon II, Qty: 2

Barrage S, Qty: 96

Lead Charge M, Qty: 100 (Cargo)

J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

1MN Afterburner II

Dropped items:

Beta Reactor Control: Shield Flux I (Cargo)

‘Langour’ Drive Disruptor I

125mm Gatling AutoCannon II

OE-5200 Rocket Launcher

Barrage S, Qty: 48

400mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I

A real job…

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After returning to the sky several weeks ago I had spent a lot of time considering my place in New Eden. I was free, I suppose, something my new Gallente employers seemed to think was the best thing in the universe, but I had to disagree. In the military I was certainly not free, but I never really had a problem with that. Actually it was quite comforting.

Freedom at this juncture meant that I could come and go as I pleased, which was welcome given my somewhat shaky state. It also meant that whatever I decided to do, the responsibility, and ultimately the bill, was on me. So it was not without some hesitation that I undocked from the Oursulaert federal navy testing facilities in a shiny new fitted and rigged Harbinger and set a course back to the corporate hanger in Charmerout.

Don’t fly what you can’t afford to lose. That was the advice I’d received in my welcome pamphlet when my planetary shuttle dropped me off at the station, and a thousand times since. That was stupid advice. Don’t pay for what you can’t afford to lose. That was better, get someone else to foot the bill then fly reckless. Wars are won and lost on that very principle.

In this particular case it wasn’t quite that bad. I could technically afford to lose and replace my new battlecruiser several times, though I really didn’t want to have to do that. But the state of the federation, at least of my neck of the woods, was somewhat dire and my trusted Maller could no longer handle the sorts of situations my employers were putting me in. It was time for a change.

I docked at the corporate hangar and felt my pod jolt as the hull of the massive battlecruiser opened and the robotic deck crane extracted my pod from within the its thick armored heart.

“What the hell is that?” It was one of my corp mates, a young minmatar. She was staring up at the Harbinger.

“It’s a brick. A brick with guns on it. We’ll see how it flies tomorrow,” and I headed back to my quarters to relax – and notify my insurance agent – before the next job came in.