EVE Fiction

The Zealot was a great ship, but I needed to get rid of it. I also needed an identity, even a crappy one - not having one was a dead giveaway. It also meant that docking at any of the stations might not be a good idea. I had a look at the system map and chose the moon farthest away from the gates. I warped to it, then engaged the afterburner to put some more distance between me and the nearest on-grid installations. A few hours later, I was entirely off grid. I thanked technology for giving free access to so much information - this particular trick was very useful indeed. For a little while I would be safe here, so I focused on the task at hand. The frequency of my former owner's messages had gone down a fair bit, so had the general tone of his messages. (It's weird, really. Even after all these years I still cannot bring myself to using his name. Then again, even if I could he would not even deserve to be called by his name - but I digress).

Suddenly the prospect of throwing that sorry excuse for a human being out of an airlock became incredibly tempting. In my situation he was an asset though, one too precious to throw away without thinking. As much as I wanted him gone, I knew I needed him. I wondered if he had figured out what had happened yet, and called his room. Turned out he had not, and the color draining from his face was enough to rise my spirits a fair bit. As luck would have it, he had brought his favorite son along, whose life became my best bargaining chip. After a lengthy discussion it was agreed that I was going to simulate a systems failure, and one of his pod pilot friends was going to tow me into station. Once there, I would keep his son as a hostage until the rest of the agreement was met, namely me getting 500 million ISK. He could keep the ship, since I didn't want it anyway.

I knew that once I would be on the station things could quickly go out of hand. I was in entirely alien territory, and utterly out of my depth. I had nothing to lose though, and no better plan. Once we were docked I took my former owner's son with me into the station's merchant area. Here I found the most disreputable looking accomodation I could find and set up shop waiting for the credits to be wired. I was midly surprised when the ISK actually appeared. I instantly split the money and moved it to several small new accounts and threw his son out onto the street. Then I upgraded my wardrobe to something more fitting and checked into one of the luxurious palaces in the upper classs residential area. In their arrogance they would surely believe that I would stick to my "level", so I did the exact opposite again. After a full manicure and a nice ink job I might as well have been a different person.

I did not want to get carried away in all this opulence, so I made a conscious effort not to let my adrenaline level wear off. I still needed a real identity, so I started discreetly researching where one would get that. I was forced to change back into plainer clothes, as I was attracting way too much attention - but then I managed to find the information I needed. A small time gallente thug called Zephros was apparently helping shady characters to get a new identity if things got too heated for them. I scouted out his office - if one could even call it thus - and caught him one quiet day as he was closing shop. He agreed to help me for 10 million, which I knew to be three times what he usually charged. I told him I would pay him 50 million if we could do it right there and then. I swear his eyes actually lit up like searchlights in the dark. We spent the night building the background for my new identity, and I got to pick a name. Up until then I had been called "minnie brat", which as Zephros pointed out wasn't even a real name.

Megan was easy: it was my mother's name, and Shazam because that's how easy and fast it felt to create a new life, like in comic books - SHAZAM! In retrospect I could have put a little bit more effort into the name, but then I was - and still am - a simple creature. And besides, I really like the name now. Zephros did not object, he just raised his eyebrows a little then got to work. In the morning, my identity was ready, and had even already been implanted into my pod pilot grafting. Now my only dilemma was tidying up loose ends. I could not leave Zephros here with all that he knew about me. To give myself some credit, I only considered killing him for a fraction of a second. He was a small time thief, but there was a good side to him. I pondered this for a bit, and found a solution that I hoped would work for both of us.

He objected at first, but another 10 million to round up the previous 50 convinced him. He would come with me to minmatar space, where he would hopefully be out of reach of the Amarr inquisition. Besides, a man of his talents would fit right in. The next day I made a ship dealer marathon to find the right ship, settling in the end on a slightly battered old navy issue slicer class ship. It was perfect: inconspicuous, fast, and packing enough of a punch in a pinch (I had been meaning to use punch and pinch in a sentence for a long time!) despite its weathered look. The substance was sound, I made sure of that - and after a minimum of repairs we were off to greener pastures. I fully expected to be shot down at the next gate, but as the stargates went by uneventfully I gradually entertained the thought that I was going to make it.

In the end, that trip was ironically one of the most uneventful ones in my whole life. It was still unbelieving, but with a smile as wide as my face could manage that I docked in Rens. Zephros looked around in awe, and thanked me a thousandfold for bringing him along. I think it was love at first sight. We parted as good friends, and I promised to come visit him occasionally. I still do today, even if seeing him always brings back all the memories I worked so hard to suppress.

I'll chat you up in-game :)

Nice read indeed. I might open the chat window one day, when the time comes... who knows