EVE Fiction

You might be thinking, "Why write about this now? Burn Jita was almost a year ago." This was going to be my submission to the True Stories event CCP is running, but the character limit was too low. Rather than sacrifice parts of the story (though it's already far too condensed for my liking... I hate character limits) and submit it with chunks condensed or removed, I'm submitting it here so others will hopefully enjoy it and I can receive constructive feedback, :).

I haven't written it completely as I usually do as I usually only write much longer stories, this was written shorter to try and fit within the competition limit. That didn't happen, but I don't want to spend hours adding things now. Hopefully it isn't too terrible as is.

It'll be split into several posts as it won't fit into this one post.

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Jita. Where countless fortunes are made and countless more lost, home to the highest frequency of business transactions Caldari-wide and debatably cluster-wide. It was for these reasons Nacim Izcrius felt compelled to leave New Caldari and traverse the stars.

Of Civire descent and born to Patriot parents on New Caldari, his upbringing had been as normal as any other. He was Civire to his core, living each day healthily awaiting any opportunity for combat and the chance to practice maintaining focus and a calm mind, while retaining combat ability. Nacim pondered his heritage and wondered where it all went so wrong. He turned his gaze from the view screen of his quarters to his calloused, upturned hands, clenching and releasing them several times in frustration and concern. He didn’t know when, but somewhere between then and now, something had changed within him. Civire reflexes and focus didn’t sway his hands from his ship’s yoke; no it was the sweating that bothered him. He had killed many men during military service on the planet’s surface, studied and applied business ethic and application as was required, but nothing had made him sweat, or cast doubt on his abilities as being in space had.

Being in Jita made him sweat the most.

Nacim left his less than comfortable lounge and walked to the body-sized mirror by his bedside and looked into the eyes beyond his combat goggles. “You’re an idiot, Nacim.” He turned away briefly and snarled before abruptly returning his gaze to his reflected figure, “Even in youth you would never sweat. You’re nothing but fragility. It’s no wonder your parents left.” His desire to leave New Caldari hadn’t been entirely self-oriented; his parents left to serve the State, they told him. To do their part… to the state, but never as parents as far as Nacim was concerned. He told himself it was better that way, because it made him stronger and more self-reliant, but he couldn’t deny that he had wanted, however slightly, to be as happy as the children in the Gallente propaganda footage some of his friends had somehow obtained.

But he had that freedom now, parentless but freedom nonetheless, so what did it matter? And it was of no issue, he was an adult. It made no sense to him why such thoughts would still linger in his mind, but something in his psyche was affecting his abilities and that was the one thing that scared him. Because it was not something combat or focus could fix. He sighed and shook his head, waving away his reflection casually, “Bah, to hell with you. I’m going to make my fortune here in Jita, buy my way to an easy life and upgrade to one of those top-class clones pilots use. Hopefully one in which whatever’s wrong with me can be rectified.” Smiling, he walked out of his quarters towards his ship, “Yeah. Endless fighting, here I come.”

A voice reverberated throughout speakers within the cockpit of the Glorious Blade, Nacim’s Moa-class Cruiser, “I repeat, this is Scotty, the Docking Manager. Pilot, you’re cleared to fly, get off the deck before I have your ship impounded so the deck can be freed.” Nacim walked down the bridge access corridor, scratching behind his right ear as Scotty’s annoyed face shone on the monitors, “Oh, hey. Sorry I wasn’t actually on the bridge, I’ll be leaving shortly. I’ve just got to set my holo-dramas to record.”
“You’ll leave now, smart arse, or your ship will be impounded.”
Nacim smiled, “Okay, okay, take it easy, give me five minutes.”
Scotty sighed, resigning from the argument, “You have two minutes, then you’d better leave or you won’t be seeing that beauty for quite a while.”
“That’s fine; you won’t ever see her again. This is the last haul I’ll need to make.”

((continued.))

Nacim awoke to proximity alarms as the ship alerted him to arriving at the jumpgate to Jita. A smile beamed across his face as he entered the massive accelerator tunnel, watching out of his room’s viewport, “Ah… home and fortune.” What greeted him on the other side was anything but. Shooting out of the jumpgate the ship emerged to the sight of hundreds of ships, at least half of which were engaged in battle. “What the?!” He ran out of his quarters and up the long corridor to the bridge, hastily sitting in the co-pilot’s chair, plotting a course to where the ore sale would occur and slamming his fist on the warp button.

Now mid-warp, all he could do was wait. “Hopefully no-one managed to scan me down…” Several minutes later the Graceful Bird emerged from its warp tunnel, emerging in a field of hundreds of ships, beams of laser, railgun slugs and projectiles tearing through ship, drone and station. “What the hell is going on?!” Nacim devoted power from the unused weapon systems to bolster his shields and thrusters and powered through the mass of insanity floating around him, hoping to reach the station. He began to survey the unfolding scene more closely when an alarm sounded; he had been targeted. His hands could’ve been a steamer at the rate they were perspiring, “Okay, now you can sweat. Damn it!” He pulled on the yoke to avoid debris of a Punisher, lightly scraping the underside of the first cargo bay. “Out of my way!”, Nacim shouted, half-elevated above the seat as he tugged on the Industrial’s yoke to swerve left and slightly downward to travel beneath a Harbinger’s array of beam lasers. “No time for fireworks!”, he spat abruptly, the ship shaking and groaning as three beams tore through shielding and the starboard-side thruster.

The ship pursuing Nacim hadn’t stopped following either, still some distance away it was weaving nimbly through the wreckage, using a smartbomb to try and remove obstacles from his flight path. “Determined, aren’t you?”, Nacim said, quickly inputting commands into the main console to identify his pursuer. “Wonderful, a Dramiel. Come on, Graceful Bird, despite being a Gallente pile of junk you’re not half-bad for an Industrial. Push it!” As if by fate, a stray missile tore through the port thruster on the ship, setting the ship alight and coasting towards the station. Nacim slammed his fist into the console, opening a comm channel to the station as he did so. “Scotty, open the docking bay access, I’m coming in hot!”
“Oh, you. Not right now, there’s a great holo-drama on, I think it’s the one you recorded.”
“Scotty, just do it and there’s a 10% cut in my haul for you. Trust me, you’ll like the payout.” The Graceful Bird shuddered as the hull creaked, scraping between two destroyed frigates, “But you’ll never see one ISK if you don’t open that bay!”
“20% of the haul and you pay for the damages incurred to where you’re… landing. I’ll likely end up being fired for this.” Biting back his defiance, Nacim accepted the agreement, thinking of the overall profit of the venture, “Done, open the bay door! I’ve got someone on my tail.”
“Alright, give me five minutes.”
“Scotty…”
“Alright, give me two minutes.”
“If you think mocking me is going to make… hang on.”

Nacim checked his main console and his pursuer’s flight path data; the Dramiel activated a microwarp-drive, its speed increasing dramatically and yet still weaving between debris. Unfortunately for the pilot, their ship was worth quite a lot and increasing speed so dramatically drew the attention of other pilots. It was mere seconds before he had been targeted with a webifier, warp scrambler and under heavy fire. Nacim smiled as the pilot suddenly disappeared amongst a burst of smoke and fire, “There’s always a bigger fish.” He watched through the cockpit canopy as the docking bay ahead of him opened slowly and Nacim closed his eyes and thought of the riches his hoard would bring and being able to leave the frantic scene. “Forget it, Scotty, I don’t care. I’m just glad to be back.”
“Can’t say I blame you either. I saw you warp into that mess, you’re insane. Still, if I get fired after this, I’m glad I got to see that, that’s some battle out there.”
Nacim opened his eyes and chuckled briefly, “With your 20% you can turn yourself into a pretty decent pilot yourself. Get some training, decent ship and who knows.”
“Nah… it’s not my scene, I’m an observer, not a participant.”
“No matter, you can be whatever you want with what you’ll be making from this deal.”
“Yeah, well… let’s just hope you survive the landing.”
Nacim watched as the Graceful Bird coasted through the landing bay doors and began to plummet to the deck plating, “Yes, there is that.”

Nacim awoke several days later in the medical bay in a new clone. The Graceful Bird barely managed to hold itself together, but the ore sale was completed successfully and money wasn’t an issue. He even had new flooring installed and cleaned.

Scotty soon retired after not having lost his job, but being promoted due to station management policy of people failing upwards into a position of too much responsibility. With his share of the ore sale he purchased an attractive Gallentean slave from an Amarr trader, freed her from her slavery and married her not long after. Unfortunately for Scotty he was rendered missing from this physical plane of existence in a terrible tractor beam incident one year later.