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.

Into the Great Unknown (Eve Blog Banter 8)

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Welcome to the seventh installment of the EVE Blog Banter , the monthly EVE Online blogging extravaganza created by CrazyKinux. The EVE Blog Banter involves an enthusiastic group of gaming bloggers, a common topic within the realm of EVE Online, and a week to post articles pertaining to the said topic. The resulting articles can either be short or quite extensive, either funny or dead serious, but are always a great fun to read! Any questions about the EVE Blog Banter should be directed here.

This month’s topic comes to us from Ga’len at The Wandering Druid of Tranquility. He asks: “What new game mechanic or mechanics would you like to see created and brought into the EVE Online universe and how would this be incorporated into the current game universe? Be specific and give details, this is not meant to be a ‘nerf this, boost my game play’ post like we see on the EVE forums.“

Those of you who know me in game know that I’ve been gone for a long time. I started playing in Beta and a few weeks ago was Ghenna’s 6th birthday in the EVE universe, but I took a bit of a leave of absence for several years, and coming back has been an experience. The game is different, the alliances are different, everything, it seems has changed, and despite my skill points (and the knowledge that Right-Click is the answer to 90% of EVE-related questions) I’m very much a newbie with respect to much of the game. So much has changed, been added, nerfed, tweaked or removed that it really does feel like a new experience… that being said…

“What the hell is that?” I sent the message over the fleet com channel. My systems were buzzing with feedback from the local anomaly, I couldn’t be sure the message went through. My executioner hung in space above a tear in reality.

“It’s a wormhole,” came the static-laden reply, “cropping up all over New Eden these days, though no one is quite sure why.”

I nudged my hull closer to the anomaly and sent my camera drones out wide to get a better look. “Where does it go?”

“This one’s a shortcut to Minmatar space, so nowhere interesting,” Maldred maneuvered her probe next to my hull as several of her scanner probes appeared on-grid and made their way back to her cargo bay. I had been flying with her on and off for the past few days, trying to get a handle on the ins and outs of exploration in New Eden.

“It’s a good find if you need to move something from here to there, will save you some serious time,” she said aligning her ship to the nearest station, “If you need it use it soon though, it won’t be around much longer.”

The hole rippled with energy, even to my untrained eye and without any reasonable scanning equipment I could tell it wasn’t stable.

“I’m going to go get a different ship and head over to another system, try and find one that goes somewhere exciting.”

“Like where?” I asked. I had learned not to worry about asking stupid questions around Maldred, particularly ones pertaining to her profession. She loved to talk.

“W-space, the great unknown. Nothing like being trillions of miles from any system that has a name,” her ship leapt into warp and I turned to follow her back to station, “If you’re excited about this stuff get in now,” she said, “there’s plenty out there that people think is valuable, and where there’s isk to be made nothing will remain unclaimed or unexplored for long. I give it two months before the empires start looking for a way to stabilize them, or God forbid, build jumpgates out there.”

“Given the distances involved that’d be a pretty big jumpgate,” I replied, the static filtering out of my com as my ship left the proximity of the wormhole.

“Yeah, pretty big disaster you mean. Been to the EVE gate lately?”

I hadn’t, though I had been meaning to since arriving back in The Empire. The idea was appealing though, more to me than to Maldred, obviously. I’d been trained as a soldier, and in my military excursions had managed to see a great deal of New Eden. It was the closest thing to exploring the unknown I had ever experienced, and while it would take years of training to get up to her level as an explorer, if the great empires decided to try to colonize this new, unexplored region of space they’d certainly need people in my particular area of expertise.

“If they do, I’ll be there,” I said as my ship eased into the magnetic docking cradle.

“I’m sure you will,” she replied, already undocking in her Helios, “Plying the age old ammunition trade business. Just remember we explorers will always be a couple systems ahead of you, and if you’ve got some spare ammo, don’t go shooting it at us, we’re not interested.”

The Helios swept out of the dock and seconds later was gone. Cloaked, or warped, or both. I couldn’t tell. My pod opened and I disengaged myself from the ship’s systems, but kept my link to the com.

“Don’t worry friend, I use lasers.”

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.”