EVE Fiction

“God, I miss Miharu.”
His lonesome mind had wandered to the thought of his latest romance, a carrier pilot with auburn hair and more tattoos than a proper Deteis woman should have. He longed for her. She made him feel almost human again.
Though he hadn’t known her long, their experiences together had been memorable, the sex and the battles. He loved being in a fleet with her. She was majestic, commanding such a powerful machine with such grace, dealing decimation like some sort of sexy hurricane.
His lustful reverie was tempered somewhat by the realization that the woman he’d been sleeping with had died in the latest capital engagement, meaning that the clone who took her place would be missing that lovely auburn hair.
Come to think of it, he’d died since then too. His lip curled into a smile to think that the next time they see each other would be kind of like the first time.
There were other things he missed about combat beside sexy capital-pilots. You wouldn’t know it by the crap assignments he’s given, but Zero was never more in his element than when he was in a large-scale engagement with the enemy. In combat, Zero was relentless, and a surgeon with 425 mm’s. Most of all he missed combat because it was something to do.
He remembered his first real battle, nothing had gone right and he was lucky to escape with his pod. Other times, he wasn’t so lucky.
Being pod-killed is an inherently inhuman experience. All the flight school training, psych evaluations, and simulations in the world could never come close to preparing you to be separated from the flesh you were born in.
Zero’s first death and resurrection was more traumatic than he’d ever let his alliance-mates know. The feeling of being drawn away from his own brain and cast across the Galaxy like an intangible rag-doll, landing in a cold room under a bright light, an less than empathetic mechanical voice asking invasive questions. The experience had stuck with Zero for some time. Afterward he’d found himself struggling with a reluctance to inflict such a thing on others.
“When did that stop bothering me?” he asked himself.
“Now I don’t even think twice…” he realized that he’d long since lost track of how many lives he’d ended in a similar fashion. He blamed detachment. All seasoned capsuleers struggle with it. The longer you spend in that egg, the further you are removed from the rest of humanity. He figured that detachment is just a tool pod-pilots use to maintain their sanity. They may try to remedy it by banding together into tight-knit alliances with their own brand of camaraderie and even their own culture, but sooner or later they find that they're losing their grip on what it meant to be mortal.
“They tell us when we join that we’ll be demi-gods, but I don’t remember being asked if that’s alright with me…”
He snapped himself out of it by willing the passive scanner to run yet again: No change.
“These boring mother-*******.”
He hated the enemy for having things to do, people to talk to. He suddenly wanted to crack their pods. It was their fault he had this assignment. If they hadn’t dug so deeply into this good for nothing system his alliance’s sub-cap fleet would have trounced through here long ago.
This whole region was worthless. Crap for rarity moons, no riches to plunder, no real strategic advantage. The alliance brass just wanted to see their flag flying over it.
Another system diagnostic: All green.
He missed his childhood pets. The life of an immortal starship pilot is not very accommodating to dogs or cats. He wished he could bring something along with him to keep him company.
“Maybe a fish! He could swim around in my pod… Nah, that’s crazy. Then I’d have to make the fish immortal too, who knows how much that would cost…”
Run the scanner/Run the scanner/Run the scanner…
He began to wonder if he was losing his mind.

An original, entering into the canon category, written the day the fiction contest was announced. Constructive criticism welcome.

Inspired by all the hatred for afk cloakers.

^this so much this!

I'm glad I don't think as much as Zero when I'm working. Good story.

Great story! And if anyone tries to assign me to that detail I think I may just start gnawing an arm off on the spot...