Alliance Connections

 Shocku looks over his maps and recent intel data and comes across this diagram showing connections between alliances. He sets a panel of the wall in his stateroom to display the image so he can refer to it whenever looking at a pilot's info, corp, and alliance...

A Large Deposit

The door hissed open as Steky entered the stateroom aboard the Cascade Essence, her Nidhoggur class carrier.   Most pilots would be in luxurious quarters in the station, and while those where available to her while docked, she preferred her stateroom aboard ship. She plopped down on the gravbed, and unsealed the inseam of her boots with a swipes of her fingers, then tossing them to the corner.  She was tired from hauling station fuel and moon minerals to and from her moon harvesting silos and stations.  ATLAS Alliance was at peace, and it was time to make hay while the sun shines. 

Out of the corner of her eye she saw two small blinking icon on her neocom, one was a message notification from her bank. Steky pushed down on the matress with her slender arms, pushing herself up and over towards the neocomm.  She could have ordered the message delivered audibly from her bed, but she wanted to puruse the list of newly released vids for something to watch before bed.  She touched the icon on her screen and the message displayed "Notification of Deposit to your account: 6,200,000,000 Interstellar Kredits.  Her jaw dropped and she almost paniced.  Most people never saw an interstellar kredit in their lifetimes.  It was a currency used by governments, corporations engaged in interstellar trade, and of course capsuleers.  Six billion kredits was a sum most capsuleers never saw, and had to be the result of either a mistake or foul play that would surely result in the need for lawyers and body guards for the foreseeable future, even if there was a plausible explanation.  

Steky groaned and immediately opened her bank account, clicked the security option, and then initiated a freeze on her accounts. Whatever investigation was to follow, it wouldn't do to complicate the matter with further transactions.  Hopefully she had enough wine aboard to last her awhile!  She then put in a transmission to Shocku, her employer.  Perhaps he would have some ideas on what to do next.  

Shocku's image, and that of a young petite blonde lit up the center of the room.  His arm was wrapped around her waist as she appeared to be half heartedly pulling away from him to get out of scope of the virtual recorder. "What is it Steky?" Shocku asked, a glitter in his eye.  
"I have a serious problem, Shock"
"You have a lot of work to do, but I wouldn't call that a problem, I know you can do it and you have the training." Shock bend down and kissed the girl's pert nipple, biting it and making her yelp and thrash in his arms, her blonde hair rippling over her shoulders.  
"Look, I am not talking about work, I am talking about a problem with my bank account, and I need your attention. Its serious!" Steky blinked away a tear of frustration. 
Shocku raised an eyebrow and made eye contact with her through the vid, "I see you read your bank notification before my own." He released the blonde and she immediately moved out of scope.  

"Ok Steky, let me explain.  There is nothing wrong with your bank account. ATLAS is currently not at war, and I can't remember the last time that happened.  We need to get serious about our industrial operations, because we will never be able to support capital operations on bounty hunting alone.  I want you to take your moon mining operations to the next level.  We are currently mining two moons, and have a simple reactor in operation churning out Vanadium Hafnite.  I want you to complete the other half of the equation, and bring it all together in a complex reactor to produce intermediate alloys.  Once we have that set up, we will be printing isk while we sleep... and even if we deploy to fight the Northern Coalition.  

Steky lifted her hands in the air, "But I am run ragged just trying to run fuel from empire and empty two moon stations!"
Shocku grinned, "That's why you need a Jump Freighter"
"What?  We don't even have a jump freighter, thats like a supercapital!"
"Aren't you trained to fly one?"
"Sure, but that was just on a simulator!  How could we ever afford to buy one?"
Shocku said sarcastically, "Check your bank account" and then looked at her seriously, Take care of it, I trust you."
With that he signed off. 
Steky laid down on her gravbed and didn't bother turning it on.  She wasn't going to sleep anyway. 

Moon Goo

Steky checked the bounty on the last battleship in the Angel Haven Grievance had sent her the coordinates for. It was less than a million Interstellar kredits. She cursed as the structural integrity of the Angel ship gave way under the onslaught of her carrier's fighters. It was a waste. She was not concerned with the lives of the crew aboard the Angel Cartel ships she was destroying. Each of the 2000 lives aboard that last battleship had chosen a life of crime. Her mind was more occupied with numbers and risk analysis. Her carrier was worth about 1.5 Billion Kredits, and it was a risk each time she took it out. And the time it took to earn a few tens of millions was mind numbingly boring.

 

She thought once again about her starbase equipment sitting in storage and checked the prices of moon alloys. Prices were going up because the new technologies alliances now used for strategic control of solar systems no longer required starbases to be anchored around the moons. It was a large capital investment to deploy starbases, and they required frequent refueling.  But they would mine the moons while she slept, and while she was awake she could spend her time defending alliance space rather than bounty hunting.  Steky dispatched a message to her CEO, Scrapple, and then orders to Grievance to begin exploration.

 

Grievance fit an expanded probe launcher to his Typhoon and set out.  It wasn't an ideal exploration ship.  He would have preferred something faster and more nimble.  But the survey probes took up a lot of cargo space, and he couldn't be bothered to try to find and fit a faster ship. First he checked the FMH solar system where Steky had occupied moons before just after ATLAS took the region.  He grumbled seeing they had new owners, but it was to be expected.  He set course to another system, a deadend that an old friend had once mined, and found several corp mates had starbase towers in that system as well.  After chatting a bit, they gave him some tips and he went to check out the moons in a couple nearby systems.  He grinned as the moon probe returned its data from the surface of the otherwise desolate looking celestial body.  The mineral Hafnium was reported in minable quantities.  A few systems over, Grievance found Vanadium, the other mineral needed for the reactor.  He relayed the information to Steky, and parked his ship in orbit around the Hafnium moon.

 

Steky woke and checked her neocom. No messages from the CEO, and he was not on comms.  The two moons Grievance had identified winked in the air over her charting table.  She needed to claim them quickly before someone else happened to notice them.  She put in a call to one of the directors and explained the situation.  He said he would give her roles long enough to put up a starbase control tower until the CEO got back to make a decision.  Steky ordered the carrier to jump back to the 77S Solar system and docked her carrier.  She quickly loaded a small Angel Control Tower, Moon Harvester, Silo, and an artillery battery into a Mammoth class hauler, along with the minimum fuel requirements and ammunition.

 

The crack of Steky's pistol rang off the walls of the bridge and the crew assembled jumped back as the body of the foreman slumped to the floor, the back of his head splattered on the wall behind him. "Now, who else has a problem manning the harvesting operation?"  The crewmen trembled and tried to pry their eyes off their boss on the floor to look at the capsuleer.  Nobody breathed a word.  Already the mess began to disappear as the automated cleaning bots performed their function.  In a few moments he would only be a memory.  steky cursed, "Is there any difference between hauling salvage from pirate wrecks?  Its not like you will be stuck out here indefinitely.  There will be hauler runs every few days for fuel and minerals and I will be glad to ferry your families for visits and shore leave as well." She holstered her pistol, the borderline mutiny had been snipped in the bud.  She promoted the most competent crewmember to foreman, and a few others to assist him.  They saluted and headed off to their new duties, along with tales of both horror and wonder at their boss who delivered both death and riches upon them like a god.

 

Barqs queried over the comms, "How's it going?"  Steky replied, "Good, onlining structures now."  She muttered as she offlined the harvester and silo again, and coded them for Hafnium, a step she had forgotten.  Her skills were rusty and she had to do the job of the former foreman. Soon they were back online and she linked the harvester to the silo.  As the arrays began powering up, she double checked everything.  There was fuel to power operations for four days.  That should be enough time to square things up with Scrapple, at which time she would fuel the control tower for a month.  She transmitted to Barqs the job was complete and collapsed in her quarters.  Tomorrow another tower for Vanadium... and the reactor.  She fell asleep dreaming of the angry foreman's face covered with moon goo.

Sensory Input

Shocku thought the command, picked up by his neural implant and racing at the speed of light through the optical network of his Rapier class ship's systems.  Everything went dark except heavily shielded life support systems in his capsule. It was nerve wracking to be suspended in ink black fluid with no sensory input.  If a meteoroid was about to pierce the hull of his ship, there would be no way for him to know until it was too late. But it was the only way, and even then it was a long shot. 

An enemy spacecraft plied this solar system, engaging and destroying the Angel Cartel pirates and collecting their resources in the asteroid belts.  Shocku could care less about the Cartel and its resources, but he wanted to deprive the enemy of the ability to profit from systems within Atlas territory. 

 

He counted the minutes, hoping he would be lucky and the enemy spacecraft would warp to the asteroid belt where his covert operations ship floated dark and quiet.  There was no way to tell without powering up his systems, and those would create a subspace signature the enemy ship would immediately detect as a spacecraft within the local system. 

 

Shocku counted and waited...  Suddenly he powered up the Rapier and immediately scanned the belt. The signature of a Drake was detected, but it immediately cloaked.  Shocku wondered if the Drake was piloted by man or machine.  He deployed drones, activated his micro warp drive, and set his trajectory towards the last known location of the drake.  Nothing, luck was not with him tonight.  Well, at least he had disrupted the enemy's operations this evening. 

 

Cloaking his ship a safe distance from the nearest belt, Shocku drained and disconnected his implants from his pod.  Feeling his lungs begin to heave, he doubled up and clenched his diaphragm, discharging the perfluorocarbons from his lungs in a long choking vomit.  Gasping, he grabbed a robe and headed to the captain's quarters for a shower.

 

As the warm steam shower washed his skin clean, Shocku smiled as the door to the vestibule slowly opened.  The slender girl entered tentatively at his approving nod and wrapped her arms around his midriff, pressing her warm body up to his.  Though he could not recall her name, he did remember her description from the electronic procurement forms he had signed before leaving the Ambrosia station in the AXDX solar system.  For once, the contents of a contract in New Eden were exactly as advertised.  He tangled his fingers amongst her blonde locks as her lips slid down from his navel.  Not a single implant jack marred the back of her scalp.  He would be her only source of sensory input this night in their far flung region of darkened space.

One Lonely Sentry

Steky walked briskly into the briefing room aboard the Cascade Essence, a Nidhoggur class carrier. Her boots clanked against the metal deck as her assembled officers quickly rose to attention. She brushed an insubordinate lock of hair from her eyes and called out "As you were!" The fighter pilots, drone control officers, hanger controllers, and other deck officers sat back down in the leather seats and listened. They were no longer milk run carrier officers, and now had the discipline and bearing of soldiers with combat experience. The Cascade Essence had participated in Atlas' capital battle for HZF against Legion of Death, Pandemic Legion, and others. Not only had she survived the battle, taking down numerous enemy dreadnoughts, but they had proceeded to destroy dozens of enemy station towers in the Detorid region.

The briefing began. Atlas was seiging the last remaining enemy holdout in Deterid, the solar system designated 77S8-E. Steky went over the lessons from previous engagements, reminding the sentry drone officers not to deploy after coming out of warp at an enemy tower until the carrier was moving less than 20km per second. The navigation officers were to ensure that the ship maintained range with the enemy tower in case her attention was elsewhere. The pilot could control any subsystem at the speed of thought, but even so her attention had limited bandwidth.

Suddenly Steky stopped in mid word and then called out, "Battlestations!" The lights went red and the men and women scrambled. The Atlas fleet commander had ordered capitals to undock and jump to a cynosaural field in the 77S8 solar system. As the carrier left the station hangar, the space around the station was cluttered with dreadnoughts and carriers. It was a wonder that the station's traffic control system could manage.

Suddenly the fabric of space rippled as the capital ships engaged their jump drives and the stars winked out. Steky quickly shifted to a camera drone within the engine room. Looking the view from the external cams mid jump would be like trying to look out the back of your head, through eyes that weren't there. It lasted only a second or two, and then space was suddenly filled with the glowing rings of a giant gas planet and the shimmering light reflecting off the hulls of over 100 dreadnoughts hanging in space above the rings like an overturned box of jewelery.

The fleet warped to the first enemy tower and the crew ran the ship like a well oiled machine. The sentry drones deployed with their giant rifles hurling explosive warheads through the shields into the control tower. A few minutes later the fleet commander called for a carrier to light a cynosaural field so that more dreads could jump into system. Steky grimaced and acknowledged his request. It would mean that her carrier would be unable to move out of the cyno field for ten full minutes.

About 7 minutes later an enemy stealth bomber dropped out of warp amongst the capital fleet. Steky immediately started locking the tiny ship, but it took the computers what seemed an eternity to lock onto it. In that time the bomber deployed its bombs. The damage they did was insignificant to the capitals, but did enough damage to the sentry drones that three of them were unable to engage their propulsion systems. The enemy tower suddenly began burning ozone and went into reinforced mode. There was nothing more to be done until its ozone supply was depleted some hours later. As soon as her cynosaural field was down, the fleet warped to the next engagement. Steky engaged her warp drive just as two of the three damaged drones made it back to the hangar. One lonely sentry remained behind, its propulsion systems fragged beyond repair.

The Gray Waters of Morality

Grievance set his comm system to transmit queries on regular intervals to any other human ships that might have entered the unknown system through the same or other wormholes. The queries offered ISK to any pilot who could give the location of a wormhole out. After several weeks of fighting sleepers, their ragtag fleet was low on supplies.

Suddenly a transmission came through from a human Buzzard class craft. "Coordinates of a wormhole transmitting" Grievance entered them into the navigation computer and engaged the warp drive. They landed near a tiny wormhole that appeared near collapse just after the Buzzard disappeared through it. There was a distinct possibility that it would not support the mass of his ship, let alone the rest of their small fleet. Darkside's battleship would certainly not make it. Grievance had not only his own crew, but also the six thousand man crew of Darkside's ship to think about. He had to get out in order to guide a corp mate with a prober back to the wormhole to guide Dark's battleship out.

Grievance saw Voyk's Thorax and Daniel's pod drop out of warp next to the wormhole. He had anticipated the possibility of this scenario the moment he accepted the others to his fleet. The capsuleer parted the gray waters of morality and space with the knife of energy transmitted by his warp disruptor at Voyk's ship.

Voyk's Thorax met the challenge and burned towards him, his lasers flashing into the Rupture's shields. Grievance activated his autocannons and loosed his drones on the Thorax. Looking with concern as the shields dropped along with the range to the Thorax, Grievance was concerned that his long range barrage cannons would be able to track and pulsed his micro warpdrive. It was not needed as he could clearly see that the Thorax armor was melting much faster than his own, and he hadn't even activated his repper yet. "He transmitted a message to Voyk's pod emerging from the crumbling ship, "Safe journeys" knowing full well that only the capsuleer would awaken in a clone vat as his crew boiled and froze in the unknown space of a distant galaxy. Voyk transmitted, "Good flying" just before his pod burst under the autocannons. Daniel's pod was next, some men could never bring themselves to self destruct and face death even though they knew their clone would awaken once again. Death was death.

As debris floated around the Rupture and began to swirl around the event horizon of the tiny wormhole, Grievance transmitted to Darkside, "I will be back, God willing"

As his ship fell through the liquid watercolors and came out on the other side, Grievance watched his navigation computers with hope turned to acid as they reported, "Unknown Constellation. Unknown System. Uncharted Planets..."

The Unknown

Grievance almost lost his stomach as his ship came to rest. His navigation computer flashed "Unknown Solar System... Unknown Constellation... Uncharted Planet" Space rippled around him again as the other ships in their fleet arrived. Grievance warped to a planet and marked safe spots en route should he need a random point in space to escape from any threat. He then began scanning. Many anomalies showed up, and he called out to the fleet, "I have some kind of dead space installation on scan, shall we check it out?" Daniel and Voyk responded "Aye" and he warped the squad to the unknown installation.

As they dropped out of warp, Grievance saw an enormous installation with two frigate and two cruiser sized spacecraft of unknown type lying dead in space. He looked around and saw asteroids composed of valuable minerals in the vicinity. Suddenly, the unknown craft came to life, as if awakened from a long sleep. His ship was instantly locked and missile spat from tubes that were obviously launchers. Grievance immediately called "Battlestations!" and activated the Damage Control teams. He then selected a nearby planet and began alignment sequence. Only then did he lock the unknown craft with his targetting computer and activate his guns. A bright flash of plasma momentarily blinded his plasma gun as Daniel's ship exploded next to him.

A missile struck and Grievance watched as his shield fell to 55% from the single strike. Fortunately his autocannons were eating into the Sleeper's armor. Another missile hit their aft section, and shields collapsed. Damage control teams were already busy mitigating damage to the ship's armor and hull. A Sleeper frigate melted under his fire and Griev initiated warp to the nearby planet. Only by warping back several times was he able to destroy the sleepers and loot their wrecks of what appeared to be ancient databanks.

His cargohold full of artifacts retrieved from the Sleeper wrecks, Grievance called for Daniel's pod and Voyk's Thorax cruiser to head back to the wormhole. As they dropped out of warp, a fleet of battleships flashed onto his overview. Paying his tiny cruiser no mind, they entered the wormhole causing space to melt and splash like a pebble thrown into a pond. Suddenly it was as if a bubble burst and the wormhole was gone. Grievance called Cobra on the comm and asked his location,

"Oh, I am outside, I went back to station to get some supplies" replied Cobra cheerily.

Grievance's tone was flat, "The wormhole collapsed"

"Oh well, you are outside, aren't you?

"Inside" Grievance switched from the corporate comm to fleet. The corp might as well be in another galaxy, for in fact they were.

"Any of you have a probe launcher?" Grievance hoped that at least they might find another wormhole leading back to somewhere in New Eden. Both Darkside and Voyk responded negative.

"Then we are fucked!"