EVE Fiction

oaramos: |oh-WAR-uh-mohs|

noun
1. From an old Caldarian language, meaning, literally, "Wave-rider." Term given to early wormhole explorers in reference to the orientation of their vessels as they entered wormholes: keel first, to present the most structurally sound surface to the far side in the case of large objects (e.g asteroids) immediately upon emerging, similar to how oceanic vessels fell off the backs of waves.

adjective
1. [see: "moss" "mossy"] slang — crazy, insane



"Jessie, I need readings on that Siggie, stat."

Jessie was cute. That farm-girl brand of cute you only read about in the sort of trash novels you pick up in the dumpiest of backwater low-sec stations waiting for your rig to get repped between rat runs or salvage ops; those books seem to come standard there, worn out spines and wrinkles all but part of the cover art. Maybe they made them that way—who knows? They're paper, the old-fashioned kind, and no one cares about reading them for a bit and leaving them back where they found them, on some lonely chair in the waiting room as the station engineers tow the rig back out looking...well, not shiny and new, but at least functional.

And there they sit, abandoned 'til the next curious pilot comes by, haunting those fringe stations like ghosts from an older time.

Point is, Jessie had that kinda reddish hair some flash parents like the execs over at Sukuuvestaa or CBD would pay big to give their children. Only she got hers the old fashioned way. No parents sending their kids to Brightling Nav School could afford in-utero cosmetic gene mods. Brightling wasn't the worst, not by a long shot; no one's arguing that. But it was State run—not corp like any of the good academies these days. Still, she got good marks, and with her green, green eyes all wide and shiny and fresh from the classroom, she found herself keeping up a Heron with a tried and true capsuleer.

Captain joked that she's the only thing kept them pointed in the right direction at times.

Now, the Zen Mind I was a piece of work, too, in her own right. Her captain wasn't much less green himself; half the mods he installed in the wrong place, or didn't work quite right; oil pressure in the lower parts of the hull never seemed to be anything less than critical most hours of the day, and the nav computer randomly made a noise that anyone who's spent any time in a ship would tell you nav computers really just shouldn't. Sparks, the engineer, he kept the oil pressure thing in check, but there was no helping the nav computer. On-board sleep was virtually impossible.

Actually; it was impossible.

Not that captain would've let them nap anyways. Once the Zen Mind was out, it was all work for their little crew; probe readings, scans, data logging. “Captain’s always searching for something,” Jessie wrote home to her parents in her first mail from the Uitra VI station, where they were stationed at the time. She’d asked him once, what kept him glued to the glass—the next big score? Answers to some great mystery? God?

She'd done her homework on him before signing on. Captain was a tube baby, probably Deitis; they're always Deitis. Graduated from the State War Academy. Could've gone Navy proper, but took up a pod and went corporate instead. Freelanced a bit for the SWA, but got picked up pretty quick by a younger corp looking to find raw recruits like him to fill out their lower ranks. And find him, they did. With a pretty nice signing bonus too. At least, those were the rumors. Not that he was the only one; many turned to the capsule after the reclamation of Caldari Prime. Young, hungry, earnest.

But he just shrugged and said he’d know when they found it. And that was the last time Jessie tried getting close with her captain.

So Jessie was helping Sparks with a coolant leak on the starboard engine block—which is to say, she stood by the toolbox and handed him what she best guessed was the doohickey, gizmo or gadget he was asking for when he called for it—when Captain called her to the bridge with reports of a “Siggie” on the far side of the sun. Probes were out and first readings came in. That's where trilateration got delicate. Set the signal too short, and you'd lose it. Take too long, and someone else—another capsuleer, most likely—would pin it down first. Sure, there were plenty of relics and ruins out there in the Dark. Just not enough for everyone to share.

"Decrease the scanning radius to five AU. Move Probe 1 two-point-six-six AU direct away from the fourth planet, at six degrees north of its equator, then run the scan again."

"Five AU, fourth planet, six degrees north," Jessie repeated. "Aye, aye. Warping now."

Jessie's eyes flashed to the nav computer by the captain while the probes warped to location and then began to scan their surroundings. She expected it to make that noise any second.

Any second...

But the nav computer remained stubbornly silent.

The captain blinked his eyes open. The light in the station’s med bay was bright. Too bright. He clapped his hand over his face and felt on his wrist...stubble? It itched. But he was clean shaved before they left Uitra VI.

Then his stomach sent him soon-to-become-familiar warning pain, and he sat up just in time to wretch into the bowl waiting for him beside his bed. It, too, was all white, like every surface and sheet in the room, save where the walls were lined with capsules.

Capsules, just like his own.

When he finished dumping the nutrient slurry from his stomach, the captain found a tablet computer on the table to his other side. The crest of his corporation blinked proudly on the screen. Swiping it aside, he saw the mail icon blinked, begging for his attention.

2 Unread Mail it boasted.

The first: Sent by: Secure Commerce Commision

”We here at the friendly Pend Insurance...”

He set the tablet aside. He didn’t need to read the rest.

Then came the voice from of one of the corp’s officers. COO, human resources, the young captain wasn’t really sure what the guy on the other end actually did, but he was on comms a lot and helped him navigate the corporate environment. Friendly enough, but it wasn’t wise to hand out trust in New Eden. Trust was like collateral, and the wise held it close to keep its value high.

“Just saw your killmail,” the corpie said, with something of a chuckle. “Two days in a capsule and you're already diving into wormholes? That’s moss, man. What were you doing out there?”

“What happened?”

“Sleepers,” the corpie said. “I’m guessing you probably got podded on the way out.”

Still queasy, the captain let his head sit in his hands and tried to piece it all together. N-017. Wormspace. The groaning of the Heron’s hull. The sound from nav. Darkness.

Jessie...

There was a long silence on the comms. Then the corp's CEO, all business, all flash, wearing his best Caldari snicker, showed his face as well. “Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “It’s not like we’ve never lost ships either.”

The junior officer laughed. “What are you talking about?” he jested, “I’ve never lost a ship diving in wormholes!” They both cackled some more at the bright inside joke they shared.

Still fighting the bright lights, the captain reached and found a pair of sunglasses sitting atop a pile of clothes. Murkatur. Designer. Real flash.

Neocom tablet in hand, the captain went to the station's bar and sat down for a drink. He ordered three, but left two untouched, and the bartender—well, he’d seen it enough times to not say anything.

“No,” the bartender heard him say to his comms. “I told those morons in Jita 4-4 that I’m in the Market for a Heron, and no, I’m not going to pay that absurd price when it’s 204% above market average. Let the other idiots pay for that overpriced steel; they’ll drop the price by 25% or they’ll have unassembled ships sitting on the market.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” his CEO responded. “A man with a plan. I like that.” More somberly, he added, “Cheer up. I'll send a few more ships next time if you want to go wormhole diving.”

“I think I’ll stick with data sites for now.” Beer in hand, the captain walked out to the viewport where a new-looking Heron was being towed in to dock. He found the Heron in the ship’s registry and scrolled down the pop up drop-down menu until he reached “Rename ship...”

“Well, good,” The CEO nodded. “Y’know, it’s like they always say, ‘that which doesn’t kill you...’.”

Sure, the captain thought as he looked back up at the Zen Mind II