Fiction: Reliquary In Three Parts, by Tom Servonaut

“The Ancients being haughty and full of grim purpose had set in their hearts a rule herein that they, as masters of all they saw, were the pinnacle of creation. Having written this upon the coding of their minds they could wander no further under the harsh gaze of any superior. They abandoned the Divine. But for all their achievements, fate found them a poor fit for the mantle that it left behind. Despair set in at the Closure of the Worlds. And yet the Divine did not leave them, entirely.”

Azir of Amarr, Book of Tendancies. The Lost Scriptures


“Hurry up Stringbean, move your stern! They’re coming!”

The pilot, floating in a suspended bioliquid within a pod was talking to either himself or his ship. To differentiate was to split hairs. Tom Servonaut’s Helios frigate “Stringbean” was automated enough to require no other crew. Exploration crews were hard to find, anyway. The missions were all too often suicidal, and few mortals were quite so desperate to go exploring with a capsuleer. Anyone who would sign on to a cov-ops frigate was not someone a Tom would prefer not to ever hire.

Still, a bit of company would be nice. The pilot bifurcated part of his consciousness to keep working on the scan probe protocols “hop to it, Alt.” he said offhandedly to himself while he scanned around looking for rats or other no-good low down dirty people who wanted to interrupt his serious work ethic.

Low-sec. Why did it have to be Low-Sec where his search led him. “I just finished paying for this ship.” The cloaking field was holding, but if the locals knew he was here and what he was doing, well, the cloaking field would not be enough to save him a rather brief but expensive death.

97% scanned. It was there. His scan radius was 25 astronomical units. If he could only find the right final combination of probes to find whatever was out there, what he hoped was out there, all the risk would be worth it.

***

The craft was spidery thing. Slim metallic trusses of salvaged Terran alloys stretched out for hectometers, trussed by a rigging of stranded fullerine fibers. If it were all compacted together, the gossamer thing would be very compact for the crew of less than one hundred it carried.

JXR714B, for that was its only name, was alive by some definitions. The organism fed on equations from imputed quantum changes at the sub-molecular level of the crew’s linked brain matter, and thence stretched its fullerine muscles to gravimetric harvesters. It rode the universe like an ancient kayak at sea surfing frigid waves, waiting for the right combination of stars and planets in sequence, focusing its gravimetric pull until warping space itself, reverberating the crew’s thoughts back as feedback that could be consumed as pure joy.

To fly with one’s crew, no greater happiness could exist for those brief moments of fantastic acceleration. And when the movement ceased and the ship was deposited into another system to wait again for better tides, the crew could only look at one another and silently acknowledge that they needed More. Their needs were simple, but all devouring.

***

The boy pulled a black shroud over the man he’d called father. His eyelids were weighed down with obsidian pebbles, and his beard had been oiled and braided with fine beads, as befitted a chief of the Amarr people. There were few of the True People here today. The elders stood watching nervously, as a shaman stood forth at the body’s left side, gently shooing the him out of the way. The ancient chanting began as another shaman strode to the right, each one chanting lines from languages dead for so long no one could have even remembered their name, let alone their meaning.

Aum bhūr bhuvah svah”
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti. Amen” Tat Savitur vareniyaam”
Credo in Deum Patrem omnipotentem”
Bhargo devssya dhimahi”
Creatorem caeli et terrae”
Dhiyo yo nah prachodayat”
Court Adjourned!”

The lines were repeated back and forth with shaking of human bone rattles and sprinklings of incense upon the body by the elders and his youngest concubine, until both shamen finished with the final line together. All present repeated the statement, whatever it meant. Then Azir buried his father, Ushta, chieftain of the True People of Athra, son of another chief, and so on in a line going back unto the breaking of the sky and the message of Dano Gheinok.

The True People were no longer many. It was said that once, when Dano Gheinok strode the world, that no man or woman could count them all or recite all lineages. Living among them were many who had seen the light of the first star. Stories were told of these folk, These were large people, tall, strong, crafty and fecund; often as vigorous in acts of lust and evil as they were in doing good deeds. This confused Azir. He liked the stories of the starfolk, though. Much of Amarr life was now based on the Idle, the never-ending path and search.

The True People had to live by their wits and the remaining gifts of the past. They were surrounded by False People, those who had abandoned the teachings. They no longer searched for relics. They no longer tended the remaining machines. None of them knew the sacred codes. Instead they farmed with their own hands, or the aid of animals. They fished and hunted. When the harvest was good they praised their imaginary spirits. When it was bad they blamed the same spirits and often invented new ones. When they were VERY upset they blamed the True People, and hunted them down across the barren wastes where the True must walk. The Amarr in turn defended themselves when they could, fled when they must, but always hid their sacred knowledge and treasured items. They did not falter. The Amarr would possess Athra one day; that and more. It was foretold. God made easy what was difficult.

The caravan of land skiffs moved on greased wheels and outriggers over soil only now losing the chemical poisons that had nearly made the world unviable for centuries. The Amarr were not ignorant of change. Their roving scribes counted the weeds and plants each year, took note of differences that had at first seemed only a dim hope. Athra was coming back to life, not just in the enemy farmlands. The caravan used ancient sails, lateen rigged, to capture well known seasonal breezes to propel them from one place to another. Their skiffs tacked across prairies and sped in downwind reaches across sandy deserts. When the spirit moved them, they would dig, and once on awhile they would find something good. Or God would reveal it, personally, some outcropping that at first seemed a rock would be a relic of the blessed ages, and with it maybe useful gifts, or at least good metal.

Azir sat on the prow of the caravan listening to the play of wind in the sails, watching the starlight and nebulae of New Eden. A day before his mother would have told him to go to bed, and he would have obeyed and swung by ropes to the berthing skiff. But Ushta was buried now, his body unmarked along the path of the Idle. The boy was now the chieftain, and he was on the cusp of what counted for manhood among his people. He navigated the stars as his father had taught. Something in the sky moved, and the boy noted the object with a fixed gaze. He calculated in his head.

“You have good peepers, boy. The light shines from a new Wanderer.” an old man at the tiller told him, “We’ve been watching it for awhile, Chief Ushta God Bless Him, before he took ill, and I. It was his work, really. I helped. It is new. Seek, but you will find nothing in the charts regarding it.”

The boy looked at the treasured charts he held in his lap, as they glowed faintly upon his gaze, and saw no sign of this Wanderer’s noted progression. “Will it stay awhile, do you think?”

The old navigator gave a deep belly laugh, the first sign of humor anyone had dared give during this mourning time, “Ah young chief I can tell you better than that! Your father worked it out. More brilliant than a star shone he. He was better at the maths than anyone. It is not just going to stay, he thinks, that is to say he thought, but even now it descends little by little. And I would not disagree with him. A new untouched starfall, Chief Azir: your father’s gift to you. In his last days, he even deciphered where it would land.”

“We go to where it will land then?” Azir asked, but he needed no answer. Young and old eyes both set on the wanderer as it progressed across the sky. Then it was gone. Ninety minutes later it returned and cut a path across the early morning, once more. Azir had been taught the mathematics of the sky. It was arcane knowledge only the True Amarr knew, and though useless now, it was the greatest of their treasures. God had bid them keep it for a reason. God was always right.

***

“Voila! Stringbean, I love the hell out of you.”

“Did Tom just proclaim love for his Helios?” Oh no. Was he think-talking on open channel?

“Gettin cozy out there!” someone else chimed in.

“You need some downtime, Tom. I know this citadel in Arant where you can..”

“Ha ha. Shut up.” he closed of corpchat.

Relic sites gave a good impression of being standard data hack sites until you got deep into the subsystems. Sometimes they were simple standard affairs, bits of old factional items no more then a few centuries old, somehow still overlooked in high sec systems despite being combed over untold times. Tom knew the drill . He had a dislike for the sleeper sites of course. Not just the life and limb. Dying gets easier with practice. There was something about robbing the dead of actual sleep. Who knew what never-ending reveries he might be interrupting.

“Faction punks make this life bad, Tommy, you see, no? A little badder than it already is, no more, no more.” a bald Minmatar explorer that went by the name of Thunderhair once told him over overpriced drinks at a Jita IV station bar.. “Killing and stealing. That ain’t nothing, my friend. People like you and me, we steal people’s heaven away. We just steal it away from them.”

No sleepers were on the directional scan now. That was a relief. This hacking puzzle was four dimensional. Traps he’d never seen before, pathways that depended on all the ordinal directions plus time plus… something else.

In his bifurcated consciousness he heard proximity alarms. Reds showed up on the scope. “Damn my Gallente luck!” he cursed, “Blood Raiders.”

He reached out in his mind to deploy drones and cursed his thinking, remembering this ship didn’t have any. It was going to be an interesting time. The Helios went evasive even while orbiting the construct at dazzlingly close range with its micro warp drive leaving a hot blue trail of distorted reality in its wake.

***

The passage had taken its toll. A local village had seen the True Amarr passing though an area not normally part of their passage, and demanded tribute in metal tools. They had no knowledge of metallurgy, themselves. Amarrian knives and other tools demanded a high trade value, what little existed in the wider world. For the True People such trades were distasteful, but often necessary. Today though held no time for such delays with long attempts at bargaining, translating, and the mock threats constituting ritualized trade.

Azir knew his father had been on a mission from Heaven. Heaven was sending a gift: his gift, and that of the True People. He bade them camp outside the village of the farmers as ritual demanded before trade the following day. At night he sent all his fighters out, men of fighting age, and women who were not raising children. They took not the crude knives they offered sometimes for trade but compact complicated devices that sometimes took a lifetime to repair and construct, and which could only be used sparingly, if ever.

Small compact crossbows, atlatls that hurled springy-knives that cut and slashed of their own volition, tubes that breathed fire, all were brandished, and such a collection had not seen its use together in many generations. These they brought, burning the stockade wall to cinders, and then entering the village already in panic and terror. They spared the live of not even one adult or adolescent. The young under a certain age were taken, along with any foodstuffs already prepared. The children would become True Amarr themselves, indiscernable from the tribe, or they would join their parents in the infinite sufferings of Hell.

In the morning the caravan sailed on across the grasslands unto its destination. They left bodies behind, and not all of them villagers. The tribe almost protested. They saw in Azir an untested boy who spent the first week of mourning in a cowardly attack, and then not even bothering to give their own dead the burial rights. As a compromise, he left behind a the two shamen and a grave digging slave for them to oversee, before sails rose on the masts. There were some words made about returning to pick them up, eventually.

Azir thought of the shamen shaking caducei and uttering nonsense over his father’s lifeless body. He hated their pointless murmuring and dancing about. They did not earn their keep. It was to the holders, like the Chief, the Smith, and the Navigator families that the true knowledge still persisted. Whatever the shamen had been taught by the ancients they forgot long ago, or failed to pass on. They were dead flesh rotting in the sun. He’d seen the way that one shaman had looked at him more than once, and he hated the man for it. He hated them both.

“I shall create a new class of priests as my gift to god, ere this gift from Heaven be truly divine.” he said out loud, standing beside the Lead Navigator. The old man at the tiller merely nodded in ascent.

He added to the Navigator, “This way we will not return.” ***

JXR714B was a living thing. Like most living things, it harbored other living things, smaller but essential to the makeup of the whole. These were, inasmuch as they could be said to resemble anything, descendants of the mighty Yan Jung and on some level still human. If the Yan Jung still existed in elsewhere, the shipmates neither knew nor cared. The Eve Gate closed and with it the Universe stopped making sense. World after world winked out like embers being doused by an unleashed river. Smoke particles containing survivors fled out above the current. Most never made it. Well beyond this area of the galaxy, there were signs of civilization, but that way had been shut to most. It was beyond the reach of these former Yan Jung.

The shipmates rarely spoke, rarely had need for names or to name new things, but they dreamed in communion. They also shared a common nightmare. One day the ship would find no tides to sail upon and bliss would not return. She was built from Terran flotsam and jetsam, and of this there was precious little left remaining when parts were damaged. One day soon it would not even be able to move or sustain them. That which was created would suffer dissolution. That which gave joy would lose joy.

The ship was deposited in the Athra system, tantalizingly close to the Eve Gate, not so many star systems away. Once when there were gates and proper starships, it would have been so easily done. But the spidery ship with no name had to travel by other means. And it was at last breaking down. The crew scanned. So few caches remained of the precious components ship needed to survive. But it found them. This was not yet the end. A small defensive satellite still orbited lowly over Athra, a Terran platform.

If not for its decaying orbit, it would have never been detected. Something was wrong. Its stock of Isogen 5 had long been removed, though by whom the Yan Jung neither knew nor cared. For all its technological wonder, it was powered by simple Lorentz drives, kept aloft by quantum vacuum flux. Having being disturbed from its point of stability, it could no longer remain cloaked and in station- keeping, waiting to defend a world that no longer needed defending. What it still held within would be useful if they could reach it before it deorbited.

JXR714B used the very universe as a counterweight to pull itself towards the Terran satellite using every last bit of strength drawn the difference of entropy and existence. As a small shudder of acceleration occurred, leading the ship forward, a thing not heard in ages sounded within crew quarters. The proximity alarm rang, an actual elctro mechanical klaxon. A Talocan ship approached, bearing down on the same target, its momentum faster than the Yan Jung could achieve. There was no time to communicate, or to compromise. The prize was needed. And so the first space battle in centuries began. It would not be the last.

***

Corpchat was going on and on about Quafe Zero versus Quafe Ultra. Tom found it strangely reassuring, even if he was too occupied to respond himself. The Blood Raiders were almost on him and his weapons could not break through their shields.

“I should have spent more time studying targeting and less time getting my noggin filled with all the Social nonsense” he said to no one in particular. “Social Social. Tom you don’t even have a girlfriend. Oh well.. egg.. would have liked your yolk but I’ll just have to cook an omelette with you instead. That made no sense at all. Au revoir, treasure.”

He wasn’t getting anywhere with the hacking on this relic cache. There was still one more, however, and he was starting to understand how they worked. He waited until the Blood Raiders closed in, nearly tearing into structure. He hit every trap simultaneously and burned directly away from the cache. It exploded, taking out the two chasing destroyers as they passed close by in pursuit of him. He’d never seen a cache erupt that violently. The armor rep started doing its thing.

His chest pounded and if he had not been encased in neoamniotic fluid he would have tried to catch his breath. “That was close. Whew!” he said accidentally switching on corp-chat. “I mean definitely Quafe Ultra. I’m a Quafe Ultra man, all the way!”

***

Terran Colony AEGIS Defense Grid Satellite 714431

LOCATION: La Grange Point 3 between Athra III and 1st moon. LOCATION ADDENDUM: ORBIT DEGRADING
STATUS: Failing. Request Service. Losing orbital momentum. STEPS TO RECOVER ASSET: Unavailable. Fuel reserve depleted. STEPS TO REMOVE ASSET: Unavailable. Isogen 5 nonpresent. ALL ATTEMPTS TO CONTACT TERRAN HEADQUARTERS

NEW EDEN HAVE FAILED. 10 to the power of 25 broadcast messages sent. Final Report:
No response from other AEGIS grid assets.
No response from EVE Gate Station.

Unknown craft (2) sited on intercept course. Transponders Unknown. Identifing as 1st and 2nd.

1st craft overtaken by 2nd craft, hostilities engaged.
Both craft fight to standstill in orbit over Athra III. On closest approach AEGIS mitigated threat by both craft, damaging 2
nd craft, and disabling 1st craft. 2nd craft engaged warp and no longer found in system.

1st craft is attaching to AEGIS. Yan Jung genetics detected but lifeforms do not respond to repeated security queries.

Crew mitigated. AEGIS 714431 deorbiting with 1st craft attached. Perceive possibility some Yan Jung persist.
Last transmission. Transmitting in the blind to Eve Gate Station.
AI Final note/Unauthorized Addendum: I did my best. I am so alone. Conduit Closing.

***

There were side glances at the boy. He saw flashes of deceit. He knew there were murmurings. His mother slept with a dagger under her pillow. He slept on the deck of the lead skiff where those he trusted most kept watch. Even with the surplus of youthful confidence, he knew that his own people would reject him, gut him and leave him, returning to the Idle if this business kept up. But the secret of the destination was held only by him and the Lead Navigator. He watched the old man recite his shaman given mantra on his beads. There was not much time left before the disloyal overthrew him and dashed the dream God gave Ushta to the poisoned ground. It was at this time he had nothing left and so he turned to a God that he had never prayed to, prayer being reserved for the shamen he’d left behind. He prostrated himself upon the deck, arms holding the jib rigging and begged God openly for a sign. He begged forgiveness for any sin he and his ancestors had committed. He begged for the True Amarr to either be saved at last or to be removed from the Law of Gheinok. As he prayed fervently and out loud the wind in the sails died. The other skiffs maneuvered to their nightly defense positions where they would soon be chained in a ring, that they called, for reasons no one could remember, the Gate. And all who could watched the boy chief praying, this sacrilege, this earnest pleading with a God who had seemed indifferent at most, to the sufferings of this world. Some felt anger. Others let pity display on their faces.

There was a flash of light. And another. Soon the light overhead was dazzling. No one had to say “look” but many did anyway. They did not know of the battle occuring overhead between the Talocan, the Yan Jung and the Terran satellite, but they knew God’s hand when they saw it. All fell upon their knees and prayed, even the children taken from their murdered parents could not deny the signs they saw.

***

“Talocan cruiser blueprint? Is it? No. What? What?!” Tom become more incredulous as he looked over the loot of the cache. There were other things. Nothing he understood or recognized, except of course, to realize he was suddenly about to be very, very rich. If he could make it home, anyway. Those social skillpoints might finally come in useful. He idly considered salvaging the Blood Raider wrecks but realized that it was out of his league now. Better to destroy them and leave no trace. Then he realized there was a subcache within that. It was as if the wreck he had been prying data from had been attached to part of another equally old ship.

He focused every last bit of his attention on getting whatever could be obtained from that wreck. ***

The shipmates of JXR714B were family. They thought and worked as a hive. In community there was bliss. This separation was a prolonged agony. His sister worked elsewhere, still alive, frantically trying to control the ship, to break free of this death trap, but it was no use. The rest of the Yan Jung, the family, were dead the moment they had pried the service entrance open to the Terran artifact. At least it had been quick for them. He and his sister would slowly roast alive as the satellite draw itself and JXR714B down to the world below. He thought he wanted to die. But life remained in him. His sister remained strong, trying to free their ship. He would be strong too. He called to her with his mind. He was alright. She could let go. They could still live. Chance remained. Hope beckoned.

They donned environmental suits and entered past the bodies of their kindred into the service entrance of the Terrran satellite. It no longer tried to kill them. Perhaps it recognized them. Perhaps it simply did not want to die alone. JXR714B was not designed to enter atmosphere. Without fail, it would burn. But the Terrans were powerful men and women. Perhaps they built some last saving mechanism. The siblings looked for neural inputs to access the satellite’s AI. It was a one in two chance as to who found it first. It was an unused device, untested with these minds, uncalibrated to their needs. But their needs were urgent. The AI read the Yan Jung male’s mind like a black hole devouring a world, destroying information and matter, converting it to something unknown.

AEGIS had a new purpose. “Save my sister.”

***

Fire trailed across the sky, scattering debris for miles in the light of morning. The renewed faith of the True led them to follow it, no matter how far it went, no matter what the difficulty. As it would happen, they did not have to travel so far as Ushta had calculated. The craft, a bulky cylindrical thing this size of a chieftain’s counsel tent, blackened on its edges, swung wide in the air, creating a firey arc, while the last of its debree trail created another smoking art counter to it. This was deemed a holy symbol from this time on.

Fire shot from its belly and it came to land very still in the rocky plain before them. Rough vegitation smoked and burned here and there. The boy had already swung down by ropes from the prow of his skiff onto the ground, moving ahead of his warriors. They bowed low as the Terran Satellite groaned with the sound of exotic metal expanding from heat changes.

He never broke his stride. He never bowed. He turned once to his tribe and said, “This is not God. Verily it is his Gift. We shall praise and thank Him, but we shall not worship idols, no matter where hence they come.” Azir saw his people rise uncertainly. He turned to the artifact and said to it. “I am Azir, son of Ushta, Chief of the Amarr, Lord of Athra, Keeper of Relics, Holder of Knowledge.”

The station remained silent. Azir tried to remember anything he could think of use. So much pointless ceremony. It had all been so hard to remember. For once he regretted abandoning the shamen. Perhaps the only thing they were useful for was this one moment. He breathed in and out. The hatch remained closed, and he had no divine worth with which to open it.

The only token of office the chief of the Amarr wore was a small circlet of silvery metal, inscribed with markings that could not be translated. He had not yet deigned to wear it. When his mother removed it from his father at burial, Azir fastened it securely to his belt, instead. Now, in a gambit at gaining acknowledgement from whatever was inside, he unfastened the circlet, and held it before the hatch. He felt something like warmth from the circlet. The hatch began to open. A walkway descended. He walked bravely forward and into the satellite service entrance, placing the circlet upon his head like a crown. It felt right to do so.

***

Her brother died. But he did not lie with the corpses incinerated with their spidery ship. Instead he lived in the complicated quantum calculations of the AEGIS. Her upgraded mind ran vast calculations with him as together they understood the purpose of the craft, where it had come from. The Terrans were truly gone. This was known. But they now understood that their own kind were also extinct with the passing of the ship. Any other children of the Yan Jung, if they existed, they would never meet. In the blissful long flights of JXR714B, survival had not mattered. They lived, they saw, and they enjoyed.

They did not dwell upon the loss that was so apparent wherever they traveled. But now mere meters away were the signs of that loss. The young leader of his people, so arrogant but driven by goals of survival for his people, a trait they did not understand until now. She and her brother could not dissuade themselves these nomads had made it here on purpose. There was no other reason for them to be in this barren plain. The leader held up a small metal hoop. AEGIS AI scanned it and immediately reported back.

“Identification, Colony Agent Headset Type 5, Rank 5. Inactive.”

The door opened on its own. The Yan Jung’s journey would end here. AEGIS was already faltering. It would eventually fail. But not before they would benefit these distant relatives, these human beings. What was left of brother had hope. His sister would survive. And so would these people. They had a lot to relearn. They’d start with this brash young leader.

***

This was a tougher hacking than all the previous jobs combined. Strange when all the relic consisted of were some fullerine strands embedded in a piece of monatomic hydrogen plate. His virus was routed at so many corners. Tom furrowed his brow inside the capsule. He was close. He was there. If only other people could see just what an amazing job he’d done. The seals broke. He had the data.

And all he got was a single transponder code. JXR714B. That and some worthless carbon. “Doesn’t matter,” he said to himself, “This trip has me set for life. For life! Tom Serv is buying a Silver Magnate. Hell with that. A Gold Magnate!” And then red appeared all over the scope. And then his ship disintegrated around him. There was no time to think about the losses, but he did just the same. His implants were worth a half a billion in contracts, easily. The value of what he’d transferred to the hold of that ship before it blew was harder to guess. A quick scan as he tried to flee showed at least the Helios was a good clean wreck with no loot left beyond salvage.

He ran for it, but was webbed. Tom knew well what Blood Raiders did to capsuleers. Those captured by them reported about it, eventually. Tom did not like to think about those stories. He took the suicide express, instead. It was over quickly.

***

And he woke up on a clone bed, surrounded by a few corp members at the station who had happened to be in the station at the time. “Tough break Tom.” said a familiar Minmatar voice. Tom’s thoughts blurred as he adjusted to the transition. The voice asked, “Were you out there stealing someone else’s heaven?”

Tom sat up, adjusting to his surroundings.

Welcome to Zoohen. Don’t Forget to tip your clone attendant!’ was glowing in big friendly letters on the ceiling. It was difficult to comprehend that the shockwave of his pod exploding was still reverberating in the debris field where he had found…

“ JXR714B” he said out loud.

Everyone looked at him, but he did not know how to explain. If he said he’d found possible Terran artifacts or some original blueprint for an unheard of Talocan ship no one would believe him. Stories like that were common enough, never proven. Explorer yarns were worse than miners’ tales. “Blood Raiders. Lost my haul and my implants AND the Helios. Well, that’s that. Guess its back to a Tier I for awhile. I guess, maybe I’ll ice mine for awhile. I still got the barge.”

“Don’t fly anything you cannot afford to lose,” Thunderhair sagely reminded him. “Yeah. Yeah. I’m gonna go get a Quafe Ultra or something.”

***

Azir watched the city that had begun to sprout where the satellite had landed. He rubbed a grizzled beard from the top of the framed tabernacle built around and shrouding the ancient device. He stood on the parapet.

He had not been within the satellite for years. The Priestess spent her time there. That was what the tribe called her. He had called her teacher, and eventually wife. Now he was old and he did not call her at all. He’d been her adoring student and fell in love with her as he became a man, only to find there was very little human within her, no common ground with someone who had never strode it. At times he felt the jealous machine she called her brother to be more human than she. And when the satellite died and was just cold material, something inside of her died too. They soured of each other’s company. She longed to return to the stars that were denied her.

He trusted her stories of worlds beyond, of levels of joy, of trust and ancient empires less and less over time. She argued against his conquests, she railed against the concept of slavery. All of this would be forgivable, for she was undeniably a gift from God. But she had little of practical value to teach him. It had been the satellite that had much of what he needed to know. But learning from it had been like drinking from a river. He could only imbibe so much, and he did not trust this knowledge to everyone.

It mattered not. Already the Amarr were growing strong. They had learned to irrigate this land, to purify it. Their numbers were returning. Their weapons were superior. The entire world would be theirs. Azir’s hunger was matched by his patience. The past centuries had made his people strong. He watched one of his children, a bearded man marching past the temple with a company of explorers heading for the wastelands. He looked up to salute his father, and Azir returned the gesture. He had his features, but also that of the Priestess. Her people were of the stars. That much he knew. One day their children would return to reclaim them.

Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants

Initial Report Into Signal Cartel’s Survey of the Anoikis Cluster and the ‘Shattered Systems’ – report by A Dead Parrot (authorised for public release 9/24/119)

Ever since the Seyllin Incident and its related ‘Main Sequence Events’ that triggered the opening of the first wormholes in YC 111, New Eden scientists have been debating the physical location of the Anoikis Cluster relative to New Eden. As a result, several serious attempts to accurately map Anoikis have paved the way for what we know today.

The first major attempt to do so was conducted during YC113 as an Arek’Jaalan project led by the Intaki capsuleer-scientist Mark726, using the designation Project Compass. The Distant Stellar Object Data Capture (DSODC), using images captured in wormhole space from camera drones, relied on the principles of parallax and spectroscopy to determine just where in space each image was located. It attempted to “ascertain whether the same distant stellar or extra-galactic point sources could be identified in both Anoikis and New Eden” through space photography.

However, this early attempt incorrectly determined that New Eden was located in the center of the known universe and that the Anoikis Cluster surrounded it, like an outer shell.

Excerpt from the original Project Compass report

Following this attempt, with the discovery of the locator functionality of starbase control towers placed in space, Mark726 and Faulx launched Project Compass 2.0 which would again attempt to locate and map the Anoikis Cluster. This time, project researchers would use the triangulation of distance measurements collected from a small constellation of five control towers placed as far apart as possible in New Eden. Their conclusions were quite different (and contradictory) to those of Project Compass 1.0.

Project Compass 2.0 concluded that New Eden was in fact not at the center of the known universe surrounded by Anoikis, but instead, Anoikis was located in an entirely distinct area of space separated by a distance of almost 1,300 light years from New Eden.

Visual representation of the relative positions of the New Eden and Anoikis clusters, as determined by Project Compass 2.0

In addition, Project Compass 2.0 was actually able to determine a rough map of Anoikis itself, using a relatively small sampling of less than 300 systems located by painstakingly triangulating their distances from each control tower in the measurement array. As of 3/13/YC114, those control towers ceased providing distances to systems in Anoikis.

Disposition and distribution of star systems in the Anoikis Cluster as postulated during Project Compass 2.0

Some years later, during YC117, an independent researcher by the name of Alyxportur was able to put together a detailed static map of the Anoikis Cluster which appeared to confirm the findings of Project Compass 2.0. You can see, in his images below, the roughly hexagonal shape of the Anoikis Cluster, similar to the conclusions reached by Project Compass 2.0.

Alyxporter’s published map generated from independent research (prior to the discovery of the Thera system)

However, at that time, Alyxportur’s findings were criticized by the scientific community and he was in fact belittled by many who said he was merely repeating research that had already been done years earlier through Project Compass 2.0. But few actually comprehended the computational methods he used to produce his results. The Anoikis Cluster had not yet been mapped with that level of detail.

Unfortunately, Alyxportur may have been discouraged by the community’s unwillingness to appreciate his work and his research was abandoned, at least in the public eye.

It is important to note at this point that both Alyxportur and the researchers involved with the earlier Project Compass 2.0 completed their work using data obtained prior to the discovery of the Thera system, and were likely to be unaware at the time that they were only mapping what we now refer to as the Anoikis ‘main cluster’, as they had no maps, data, or even knowledge of the existence of Thera and the so-called ‘shattered systems’ that were discovered later.

Fast-forward to today. Through the work of Signal Cartel researchers including myself and hundreds of other Signal pilots engaged in ongoing deployments throughout the Anoikis Cluster, aided in no small part by discoveries made possible by the creation of Signal Cartel’s ALLISON navigational AI [1], a modern picture of the relative positions of the Anoikis Cluster, Thera, the shattered systems, and their combined spatial relationship to the New Eden Cluster are becoming clearer than they ever were. Who knows what future discoveries will unveil.

Based on the dataset gathered by Signal Cartel as described above, I therefore present below a preliminary hypothesis concerning the true, accurate spatial relationship between the Anoikis Cluster and the ‘shattered systems’. See the notes embedded in each document for further details on the measurement methods involved, together with expanded text on the overall hypothesis.

First: the Anoikis Cluster and its position relative to the ‘shattered systems’. The dataset indicates that the two clusters are not co-located at all, and are in fact separated by a considerable distance:

click for enlargement

Second: the positions of the ‘shattered systems’, the Thera system and the five ‘Drifter Hives’ relative to each other. Again, these star systems are separated from each other by a great distance, but appear to be co-located along a specific ‘flat plane’ with respect to the galactic centre [note: this is also true of the main Anoikis Cluster: neither can be considered a globular cluster]. There is also a tantalising pattern within the dataset that suggests a high degree of line-of-sight alignment between the ‘shattered systems’ and certain stars in the main Anoikis Cluster (see document text for further explanation).

click for enlargement

Further research and refinement of this dataset is ongoing, and more results will be published as and when reliable conclusions can be formed.

[ENDS]

Notes:

[1] The ALLISON construct is a prototype artificial intelligence that I designed, and it is installed on all Signal Cartel spacecraft as a matter of standard operating procedure. Its principal purpose is to enhance the capsuleer’s navigational situational awareness to unprecedented levels and has proved extremely successful. Its use during the project described above was crucial as it was effectively a form of parallel processing capability combined with ultra-long-baseline interferometry, as if several hundred Project Compasses were operating simultaneously.

The above paper is © A Dead Parrot. Attribution to external sources is given in the text. All opinions stated are those of the author. All rights reserved. The Project: ALLISON Phase 3 reports are © Cassandra Habalu.

Media Enquiries: for further information, feedback, or media bookings and interview requests, please contact A Dead Parrot via Signal Cartel management or please leave comments in the space provided below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Rescue Thanks in J164218

This one goes back to Jul-26, but it is such a nice thank you from one of our rescuees I wanted to draw attention to it here. Special thanks go out to Bill Kills for the great job he did as a Rescue Agent on this one! 🙂

I’m very glad to hear from you, because I sincerely wanted you and your corp to know how much I appreciated the extreme generosity I was shown when I had gotten stuck in a wormhole after logging off without first reloading my probe launcher. I am a returning player currently on an alpha clone and my wormhole know-how is still limited. Safe to say on 26 July I learned the basic lesson of keeping an extra set of probes in my cargo.

At the time I had actually had a fairly successful run hacking data and relic sites, so my Heron was almost at full capacity when I had to quickly log off due to IRL stuff – only to return later and find out that I had lost contact and could not reconnect to my probes. It wouldn’t have been the end of the world if I had had to abandon ship and clone, but during my scanning of the system I had spotted a can that said something about “EvE-Scout”… I thought I should give it a try, although I also thought it could just as well be a trap — this is EVE after all. In this case, however, it turned out to be the perfect rescue.

Following the note on the can, I quickly got in touch with friendly people in the chat, confirmed via the website, got directions for how to locate the can, got the password and got the probes. I couldn’t play more that day so I loaded the probes into my launcher and logger out. It felt almost unbelievable. Like a lifebuoy being thrown out to a person at sea. And I was that lucky recipient! If anything, EVE succeeds in making the player feel the vastness of space. Even more so in W-space, where there are no “roads”, only faint trails in the tall waves…

The next day, I logged in and resumed the scanning routine with the new probes. To see the probes flash felt like being able to breathe fresh air again after having been near suffocation. A small thing, really, if you think about it, but for a moment I felt something very real.

Eventually I found my way back to a station in high-sec space. I wanted to go back and restock the can with probes, but the path had closed by the time I could reach high-sec shops.

I have to say, there can’t be many cases of such altruism taking place in MMO games, let alone in the world. It was a really cool experience and yet another thing that makes EVE a very special game.

I saw the testimonials on your website and I would gladly let you share mine there. No need for anonymity – I want people to know how awesome you guys are!

I’m currently taking dives into W-space in between high-sec dabbling, so for now I’m not looking to join a player corp which gets wardecked a lot, but some day I would definitely like to try joining a friendly exploration-focused corp such as yours some day, if alphas are allowed.

Once again, thank you very much!!

Kind regards,
Ilska

Anatomy of a Rescue

It was a quiet night at ESR Central Command. And before you get any false ideas in your mind about what that is, it’s basically a few small desks in a tiny, cluttered office buried deep somewhere within Paleo station. Even though the space has been mine for close to a year now, I still get turned around sometimes when trying to find it. “Labyrinthine” is a pretty word that comes to mind.

At any rate, it was quiet. A Dead Parrot and I were just sitting around chatting. While not an “official” member of the SAR crew, Parrot’s work with Allison has made him an integral part of what we do, and he’ll often be found in the SAR office, working on one thing or another. It was getting late on this evening, and we were done working and had turned to discussing how to encourage our rescue pilots to keep at it, brainstorming ways to keep the heart fires lit and to help keep enthusiasm high. Parrot was right in the middle of saying something about Allison’s role in all of this, when the stillness of the office was disturbed.

It was the chime that we both love (a chance to help!) and dread (what if we can’t?), the alert we get from Allison any time a rescue pilot enters a system with an active SAR request: “ESR Team, I just flew into J111629 (An active SAR system) with Holphi Kord.”

Parrot was startled out of his reverie. “Holee cow poop! Now I have to stay awake.”

“Wow,” I replied. “How’s that for timing?”

“Amazing.” Parrot was already springing into action to check on Allison’s logs.

Allison’s alert had gone out over the network to all of our Coordinators. We got a reply right away from Triff: “One of you two got this? I’m out and didn’t want to have to remote in.”

From some remote corner of Anoikis, Igaze chimed in: “I can get in and message Holphi. There’s not a Tripwire chain, though.” Igaze was out sowing and tending rescue caches.

Parrot was already on it, spooling back up the main systems that we had just put to sleep for the night. “Iggy, are you in touch? I can check Allison’s logs if you need me to. Maybe find the kspace connection.”

“That would be great. He’s not sure the exact route he took in. Looks like he came from null. He’s scouting connections now.”

With Igaze in touch with the rescue pilot, Triffton was off the hook, so he rang off. (We do like to give our Coordinators a break ever now and then!) Parrot realized pretty quickly that we did not have any recent intel on the system Holphi had discovered, and we communicated all of this through Igaze so everyone was on the same page.

After a few minutes of discussion, Igaze got back to us: “I’m letting Holphi map. I’ll be off for 30 minutes or so.” And than about 15 minutes later we received an update: “He found a null exit. I’ll be available again in an hour.”

After another 30 minutes, Allison notified us that Angel Lafisques had flown into the same system with Holphi. The two of them did their thing, and got every connection to this system scanned down and noted in Tripwire.

Igaze came back on: “I’m going to try and get back to Thera and then see if I can get there. The null connection is 38 jumps out though. I, of course, am buried as far from k-space as I can get, I think.”

“Don’t kill yourself to get there,” I told him. “Especially since we have other pilots in system. Have we heard from the stranded pilot yet?”

“No. Been mailed, though.”

About 30 minutes later, we heard from Igaze again: “Ran out of time. Sitting in a C1 with low static. Angel is scanning routes but won’t be on until again until 20+ hours from now. I’ll be back in 8 or 9 hours to see what’s been scanned down.”

So that was the end of it for the night. Until the stranded pilot replied, there was little more we could do but wait.

Then, early the next morning, Igaze provided a status update: “Angel has things mapped out. Pilot just responded and will be available in several hours. I can’t be on then, but I think Angel has it in hand.”

So we each went about our business, always mindful of this stranded fellow capsuleer, anxious for the next update, eyes unconsciously darting to the clock every few minutes. Several hours later, we received a notice from Allison that Holphi was remapping the system, updating it with the most recent connections.

Igaze had been in touch with the stranded pilot and was hopeful. “We might get this guy tonight. He’s online now and Holphi is talking to him. We’ll see what they figure out.” We all sent our best wishes to him, Holphi, and Angel.

About five hours later we received final confirmation: “Looks like the rescue was completed!” There was much rejoicing, a little bit of paperwork got filled out, and we all went back into waiting mode — ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice when our services were once again required by some poor, lost soul.

This is not an atypical rescue. They are each different. Each comes with its own unique challenges and each requires a team of dedicated pilots and office personnel. If what you just read sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, consider joining Signal Cartel, and get ready for the first time our copilot AI, Allison, tells you: “Captain, this system has an active Search & Rescue request.” It’s a completely new way to get your heart pumping and your adrenaline surging, as you become a vital part of the EvE-Scout Rescue team.

Astrophotography 101

Editor’s Note: This article is cross-posted from Katia Sae’s blog, To Boldly Go, and was originally published in March 2015.

“Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.” – Sean O’Connell, “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

I figured it’s about time to share some astrophotography tips. After taking 30,000+ images, I’ve learned a thing or two that I hope you will find helpful. However, I’ll be the first to confess that my gallery is more about quantity rather than quality for the simple reason of time. If I truly took the time required for each and every image capture, I’d still be exploring my first region. There are moments when I simply have to stop and take in the beauty of New Eden and try my best to capture a quality shot and that’s what this blog entry will focus on today. TLDR – Astrophotography is serious business!

Camera Control

Centered subject

We’re fortunate to live in an age of technology that allows us as capsuleers to focus on the subject, rather than the technical aspects of taking a picture. No longer do we have to worry or fuss over aperture, shutter speed, focus, etc, as all of that is taken care for us. We can now concentrate on the artistic aspects such as composition and framing. It’s quite honestly point and shoot today.

How to work your camera controls. Here’s the image capture command sequence:

  • CTRL-F9 (Turns off the HUD)
  • PrtScn (Captures the image) | MAC OS use Command (⌘)-Shift-3
  • CTRL-F9 (Turns on the HUD)
Same subject, off center

You may want to setup a single command that executes the sequence for ease of execution and reliability. More than once I’ve found myself in a hostile system and was thankful I could quickly line up a shot, take it, and move on, with the execution of a single command

Depending upon your pod’s operating system, your images will be processed and placed in your data repository at the following or similar location:

C:\Users\UserName\Documents\EVE\capture\Screenshots

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

Rule of Thirds

The first rule is, there are no rules. Remember, there’s no right or wrong way to take an image. It is, after all, what intrigues or interest you, that moment in time you wish to capture, cherish, and share with others. So, as long as it’s pleasing to your eye, then you have achieved your goal. But as in all things, you’ll learn in time and experience to master your craft and instead of taking fair or good images, you’ll be taking great ones.

Rule of Thirds

Planet upper left cross hair, sun on top line

Well, it’s more of a guideline than a rule but it’s a good one to follow and should be broken in the right circumstances. Beginning astrophotographers, or someone who’s in a hurry like myself, usually line up the main subject in the center of the image. It’s only natural, as humans we look directly at our subject of interest. There’s nothing wrong with that per say and it can work, but often times it fails to provide a balance and it can eliminate an interesting environment surrounding the subject. Remember, looking at an image is more than just looking at the main subject, because your eyes will want to wander. A good astrophotographer will capture the main subject in its natural environment as well as provide a balance to the scene.

Moon lower left cross hair, sun flare parallel

Here’s how the Rule of Thirds works. Break your capture resolution up into thirds along the horizontal and vertical axis and visualize nine equal areas on your screen. Now, where the lines intersect, imagine cross hairs, there should be four of them.

Planet right third, sun flare parallel

With the lines and intersections visualized, you now line up your main subject, as well as other things of interest, at the intersections and along the lines. Why? The thought process is it will provide a natural balance to the scene that your viewer will be able to interact with. Take advantage of lines and curves to lead your viewer on a journey around your image.

Framing

Mastering the Rule of Thirds is a great start to taking good images, but as you line up your shots, you’ll want to watch the outer edges and see if you can “frame” your subject. If possible, you can use other objects and/or the environment to provide a natural frame. Try to include natural lines and curves in a manner that will highlight, but not distract from the main focus. If you need to cut into your main subject, do so in a manner that looks appropriate. For example, making sure the object still looks whole and that the bulk of it remains.

You may end up bending or even breaking the Rule of Thirds to properly frame an image, but that’s fine if the end result takes a good picture and makes it a great one. Watch, however, because in general you don’t want to cut objects in half. Either position yourself or your camera to include them fully or eliminate them entirely.

There are however, times when cutting an object in half will enhance the frame, but only if it’s large enough to cover more than half of that particular edge. Again, not necessarily a rule, just a guideline, you have to experiment to see if the final image is going to look and feel right.

Taking a look at these two examples, we can see in the first one I’ve cut into the planet leaving some space to be seen behind it as well as cliping it along the bottom. A minor adjustment to the camera position takes care of that issue. In the second example, I’ve cut the customs office in half which really distracts from the overall image. Simply zooming the camera out moves the office completely into the scene and it helps to break up the bleak blackness of that part of the image.

Contrast

I’ve often heard that black and white photography is the most difficult to master. You may ask why, because it’s simply black versus white, but therein lies the catch. It’s not about black and white at all, it’s about shades of gray. (Not fifty shades of gray, mind yourself!) A great black and white photographer succeeds by taking a picture with as many shades of gray as possible. From the blackest of blacks, to the whitest of whites and all the grays in between. The same is true in color photography in trying to show stark contrast with shades of color. See how many shades of color you can achieve. For planets, I try to capture the shades from the night side to the light side. A fully sun lit side of a planet can be dull, but there are the extremes, like silhouettes, that can provide for some truly amazing shots.

Interesting Textures

Other than colors and contrast, textures can provide an interesting subject matter as well. After taking so many pictures of planets, they all begin to start looking alike, and you have to turn to something else to make it interesting. You may not think of planets in terms of textures, but they do indeed have them. Especially from high in orbit, where the details of a civilization begin to vanish, and the oneness of the planet begins to prevail. A famous astronomer once referred to his home plant as the “Pale Blue Dot”. Look for textures in your images and see if you can pull them out by highlighting them via the rule of thirds and framing.

Leading the Viewer

Be on the lookout for minor subjects that can help lead your viewer to your main subject. There are many interesting things in space, use them to your advantage. For me, the planets are my main subject matter in all of my shots, but I don’t always have them front and center. Sometimes they’re way off in the distance, but I always have the planet in there somewhere. In those cases I try to use nearby subjects and/or the environment to help the viewer find my main subject. Human eyes naturally follow lines and curves, so it’s fairly easy to find them and then utilize them to pull your viewer in.

Ordinary to Extraordinary

This is a difficult one, as it just comes from experience and many times, there’s just nothing in the scene nearby that can help to take what is an ordinary picture and make it into an extraordinary one. But that shouldn’t stop you from trying, nor preventing you from taking the picture anyway, if nothing else for the experience of it. Just be aware of your surroundings and see if perhaps a better position between you and the main subject will help you to pull in other things that can provide some additional interest or contrast. In the case of astrophotography, you may be able to position yourself to utilize the sun, for example, to help make some rings really pop out. Or maybe you can create an artificial sunrise or sunset. Don’t forget about other subjects like your own ship to help spice up a scene. Once you start looking, you’ll begin to see some things you can use. Move around from moon to moon, or objects like customs offices and stations, you just never know what you may find that will turn that first image you liked into something that you’ll love.

Final Words

Go out and have fun, learn by doing, there’s no better way. Sure, you’ll take some bad images, just look in my gallery, but you’ll start getting those great shots that will have others asking for more. Enjoy yourself and share, don’t be afraid of what others think. Not everyone is going to “get” your image, but you really didn’t take it for them anyway, right? Besides, there are many more who will see what you saw and that’s the greatest feeling of all, when others share in your experience.

W4C8-Q XI, E5T-CS Gate

It’s Changed

Editor’s Note: This post is cross-posted from the EvE-Scout Enclave forums and was originally published in June 2017.

I left [classified] and headed to HQ to get a new shirt to wear for non-capsule downtime.

Literally, I flew the 1,300 LY from [classified] by emerging from the hole in Hilaban, then another 14 LY to my hangar in Zoohen, just to get a new shirt. Is that indulgent and in fact evidence of Anoikis-dwellers’ skewed priorities? Have I spent too long in the dreamworld?

Zoohen regulars will know that New Eden – the New Eden – is only a few jumps away from Zoohen. I realised I haven’t been there this year (I try to go there at least once a year as a ritual) and I wanted to test something.

Since it was the middle of the day in NEST terms, and since I know most capsuleers don’t rise before noon, I expected, and got, a seamless and effortless transit up the long-abandoned and infrastructure-free lowsec pipe to the New Eden system. I even got a traffic control advisory at the Promised Land > New Eden stargate, as if I’d caught the gate crew napping at their posts, because, y’know, what the hell would anybody come here for at this hour?

There’s only one reason to come to this system  in this day and age:

The new cluster-wide, universal cam-drone upgrade we all got last month has changed the appearance of the EVE Gate anomaly. It hasn’t really changed at all, and an unaugmented baseline meathead viewing it through a window would only ever see a blinding white mass of heavenly light. To us, the resolution and fidelity and dynamic range at which we capsuleers are allowed to perceive it, means it appears more alive and more deadly than ever. It looked relatively static under the old system, but now we see field lines and what look like hot gas shock fronts, and its apparent magnitude changes every few minutes like a variable star:

The EVE Gate is 3.3 LY beyond the New Eden system, so those pulses in brightness all happened 3.3 years ago. If this huge flaw in spacetime changed tonight somehow, if it evaporated or fixed itself or whatever, then we wouldn’t know about it until the year YC122.

That is, unless the Sisters of EVE deigned to inform us first. I mean, does the SoE tell us nothing about what they’ve found out about that thing because they haven’t found anything out? Or are they as schtum about it as they are about those flotillas in Anoikis?

The trouble with coming here, to New Eden, is you always leave it with more questions than you arrived with, as well as a headache after contemplating how the EVE Gate relates to human existence.

For the record I haven’t left the New Eden system yet, as I’m ‘typing’ this through the neural interface with my ship that’s docked in SFRIM’s citadel. I might stay jacked-in and program a sleep cycle as I’ve been here before: this lot based here are devout and seem to cross the line between science and religion and back again depending on what mood they’re in. They worship that thing out there like a god even though they know exactly what it is. This citadel is their church. It scares me a bit.

Besides, you can’t get decent coffee this far from highsec.

[ENDS]

 

© Cassandra Habalu – check out more from Cass at her blog: It’s Not Personal, It’s Strictly Business

Flying Into an Ambush (xpost)

Editor’s Note: Cross-posted from Gaston Charante’s blog, Cloaked in a Hole. Original publication date: September 30, 2016.

“There’s that Cheetah on d-scan again” I said as I adjusted my probes to scan the next cosmic signature in the system.

“Perhaps it’s just scouting the chain?” suggested Trevier, the crew chief of my Stratios cruiser who I’d been working with for a number of months now.

“Perhaps. Though I’m suspicious that it’s just appeared after our probes have been out near that citadel.”

“What do you propose? We’ve only found the one relic site in this system. We could leave it and jump to the next wormhole?”

“Let’s warp to 100km from the site and see if there’s any activity. If the Cheetah is sniffing around we’ll leave it.”

Staying cloaked, I land the Stratios 100km from the relic site, a Guristas monument site which I hope will break my run of bad luck and net me a nice pay day. Forty million ISK would be good, maybe more depending on the loot in the cans.

D-scan is empty, no sign of the covert ops frigate which was causing us so much concern. I warp us back to a safe spot in an empty part of space.

“Looks like it’s gone” says the chief

“I don’t like it. Why hasn’t it run any of the sites?”

“We could just do the relic site and get out, keep our eyes peeled and be gone in 15 minutes?”

“Alright. I’m going to warp to 30km and move slowly to the first can. I want to hear the minute something appears on grid.”

Again I warped to the site. I selected the nearest can and approached it slowly. The Stratios cruiser can be a formidable ship in a fight but I’d made the decision to remove guns from it, choosing to avoid conflicts altogether instead of standing my ground. The covert ops cloak fitted to the ship is now my best defence, but that means we are at our most vulnerable when we de-cloak to hack sites.

Trevier’s voice came through my pod “That’s the can within targeting range.”

I checked d-scan one final time, seeing nothing of note on the scanner and turned off the cloaking module. Nothing happened.

“OK. Looks clear let’s crack the can and get out of here” I announce to the chief.

Orbiting the can at 2500 metres I prepare the Relic Analyser module for the process of hacking the can so we can access the loot inside. All of a sudden I see a flash of grey on my grid overview.

I immediately hit the cloak and shout to the rest of the ship “We have company!”

Mentally, I cross my fingers as the camera drones show my ship disappearing from space just as another Stratios lands right on top of me.

Trevier’s voice tells me what I already know “Shit! They’re going to decloak us that close”

The cruiser shudders as I launch a flight of ECM drones and target the newly arrived ship as the first alarms sound around me informing us we’ve been targeted ourselves. I fire an ECM burst and instruct the drones to follow up with their own jamming capabilities, desperately hoping to break the lock so I can cloak again and escape. I try in vain to warp out but the ship has us pointed, so instead I align to a safe spot and wait to see if the countermeasures can get us free.

I fire off a neutraliser module to try and drain my opponent’s capacitor to minimise any damage they can deal to us. At that moment I’m alerted to a second ship appearing on grid, a Broadsword, and suddenly we’re engulfed by a warp disruption bubble.

“Watch the capacitor!” the chief says over comms “We’re dead!”

Another alarm sounds telling me I’ve burned through my own capacitor reserve trying to save the ship. There’s nothing left to stop the attack as I watch our shields and then our armour disappear with every shot from the ambush.

“Sorry chief. It’s been a pleasure having your crew fly with me”

“Just make sure the crew are looked after Gaston” comes the reply.

I send the instruction to my broker to distribute the coming insurance payout to the families of the crew. It’s not enough but it’s something. As the alarms continue to sound louder in my pod I decide if I’m to lose this ship I’m going to do it in style. I swing towards the enemy Stratios and activate the last module I have left, my Signal Cartel issue festival launcher.

Fireworks shatter the space around us in a defiant celebration of my loyal crew, as the last of my armour is destroyed and the hull begins to break apart. My capsuleer’s pod blasts free from the disintegrating wreck of my once beautiful ship and I have a few moments to sit quietly in space, contemplating the folly of going into the relic site against all my better judgements just because I wanted to do right for my crew, who are now lost with the ship.

“Farewell chief” I say quietly as the Broadsword fires on my pod and I feel my consciousness fire across the ether towards my awaking clone back in Thera.

Learning to Love a Meddlesome AI (xpost)

This is a cross-post from Mynxee’s blog, Cloaky Wanderer, written in character.

After a long sojourn in Anoikis, I had returned to Zoohen for some R&R. I was enjoying dinner alone at Armateur, my favorite upscale restaurant in Zoohen Theology Council station, when Allison piped up. Hearing our Signal Cartel AI co-pilot’s voice startled me–I’d forgotten I had enabled her on my wrist terminal.

“Captain!” she said in her usual pert tone,”I’ve detected a +10 pilot from your personal contacts list in this establishment. Consult my screen for the pilot’s name. I’ve taken the liberty of sending him a message of greeting from you.”

I tapped the terminal and a small holo-screen appeared above it.

“Fuuuuuuuu…..”, I began to mutter, seeing the name and wondering what he was doing here of all places.

“CAPTAIN, the Credo!” Allison cut in, all mock outrage.

I rolled my eyes and asked the cheeky AI, “How would you know who’s in this restaurant, Allison?”

After a few seconds of silence, she replied “Even AIs have friends.” Was it may imagination or did she sound defensive?

“Just don’t do anything illegal, and stop taking liberties if you don’t mind.” I said grumpily, scanning the crowd for that familiar face from so long ago. Oh. There he was. Sitting in the far corner, looking as beautiful as ever. He examined his datapad, glanced briefly around the room, then touched the screen lightly with one elegant finger, his hands just as slim and perfectly manicured as I remembered them. Piano player hands. Artist hands. Extremely talented hands.

I sighed and continued eating, resigned to the fact that there would surely be an uncomfortable encounter any minute now. I really need to review and prune that Contacts list, I thought.

“WELL, I NEVER!” Allison suddenly spluttered in a shocked tone. “He has rejected my– I mean your — well, OUR — message! REJECTED it. How rude!”

I burst out laughing. “That’s his second best skill,” I told her. “Please, let it drop.”

Silence ensued for some minutes, thank Bob. However, when I had nearly finished my very fine meal, Allison spoke again, quietly.

“Captain, I apologize if I was presumptuous. But if I may say, while my searches of public records don’t reveal much, he does appear to be a good match for you. Perhaps you should bookmark his spot and warp to it.”

What the hell!

I shut Allison down, then pulled up the holo-screen again. “Message,” I said and began typing.

…Transmit…

To: A Dead Parrot
From: Mynxee
Date: YC119.06.21

Message Body:

We have to talk. You won’t believe what she said to me just now!

End Message

…Transmission completed…

Then without being seen, I slipped out of the restaurant and headed for the solitude of my quarters, wondering the whole way what exactly A Dead Parrot’s creation was evolving into.

Introducing Signal Cartel’s New Site and Blog!

Greetings, and welcome to Signal Cartel’s new home on GalNet.

Since our inception, Signal Cartel information has been presented on the EvE-Scout web site, along with information published by EvE-Scout about connections to Thera.  As Signal Cartel has grown and diversified in its own service offerings and activities, we wanted a more collaborative space to share our stories and activities. This site was set up for that purpose by Signaleer Thrice Hapus and my delightful co-leader Johnny Splunk; many thanks to both of them for their help. (Note: Our application for joining, recruiters’ tools, and forums will remain at www.eve-scout.com for admin reasons.)

Here, you will find information about Signal Cartel’s various divisions, alliance information, a group blog, a link to our swag store (soon!), and more to come. Our members will be invited to share their exploration- or corp/alliance-related adventures, in-character musings, creative efforts, game features expertise, and research findings in the blog. Original posts and selected cross-posts from members’ blogs and our internal forums are all candidates for publication here. We might even consider guest posts from the wider New Eden community. Regardless of who authors the posts you read here, they will be curated by me and edited for suitability, readability, and editorial quality prior to publication.

As busy and engaged as our members are, we should generate a lot of new blog content every month. Let us know what you enjoy by commenting on and sharing posts. And don’t forget to add our blog to your blogrolls and aggregation sites.