Intergalactic Summit

Inspired by other compelling journals that I've read lately, I've decided to try one on my own. (Well, my capsuleer therapist and I feel that I should try one, but it's mostly my idea, no matter what he says)

Journal #1: Killing Fields

“I want you to kill her,” said the woman sitting across the table from me enjoying a cup of synthetic coffee. The distribution agent’s sly smile and casual tone made the request seem so banal that it took me aback for a moment, but I didn’t say anything.

The ‘her’ in question was a mining heiress for whom the agent and I had been stepping and fetching for a bit of time. This heiress was a royal pain, but the agent’s request was all about business. Ms. Thing’s daddy had a will and there was a loophole that would allow the agent to inherit a small fortune down the line if our whiny friend was out of the picture. She offered to split it with me if I delivered the fatal blow to the heiress and some of her nearest and dearest on a pleasure yacht making its way through the system. I had questions of course. What about Concord? Was the ship escorted? Could we be implicated? She had an answer for everything and, because even I’m not that stupid, I checked some of this information through my cousin in the DED. It seems the ship was ‘accidentally’ classified as a hijacked vessel and that it was free of not only escorts, but escape pods. I had to hand it to her; this agent had some real strings she could pull.

“So that’s the deal,” she said, finishing her pitch. “If you’re not in, that’s okay. Just let me know now so I can go another way if I need to.”

I’m not much of a combatant to be honest. In the capsuleer program that I graduated from, there were scores of people who couldn’t wait to see people die in fiery explosions in faraway nullsec systems. But not me. I never had a problem with it, just wasn’t my thing. I was more interested in getting in on that lucrative station trading money and maybe doing some mining. I wasn’t naïve, though. I knew from the beginning that killing was part of the gig and had already taken out some of those 4th string pirates that were unwanted fodder for budding capsuleers. I hadn’t blown away any fellow capsuleers yet, but the prospect didn’t bother me. This was different though. Straight up murder for profit. To my surprise though, I found myself saying “Sure,” in the same breezy, unconcerned tone that the agent had used.

As my Slasher and I approached the rendezvous point, my mind floated to an incident that happened on my way back from Jita since the last time that I had seen the agent. I went to do some market research (and shopping!) and stopped at a Gallante station to visit another cousin of mine. While there, a panicked security agent hurriedly asked for capsuleers for an urgent job. She cornered me and gave me some sob story about a group of miners being held hostage and due to be killed that day. What is it with these miners, anyway? She offered me a good deal of ISK to take care of it and against my better judgement, I relented.

Things started off innocently enough. Four frigs came out to meet me when I got to the area and I dispatched them without getting within 5000km. But then, some ambushers showed up and along with them, a couple of destroyers followed quickly by another 6 frigs and that’s when things got crazy and I was ready to kiss my ship goodbye. To my surprise, though. It was all over in a matter of minutes and I was surrounded by pirate wrecks. It had all been so automatic in the end. I collected my due and went on my way without much of a thought.

Things changed after that. On my way back through some 0.5 systems, I found myself actively looking for rats, not my M.O. at all. The next day, I was comming with my sister and could barely pay attention to what she was saying. I also noticed that I hadn’t left the station for two days, though I couldn’t quite place the reason. I finally did though, once I received a communique from this distribution agent about a job.

Now I’m sitting here lighting up this unarmed yacht and watching as its shield, armor, and hull are being slowly ripped away. It’s not pretty either. It’s taking forever and I can almost feel the panic on the ship. It’s a deathtrap sprung by yours truly. Meanwhile, the comm-link has been flashing for a while now, an insistent cry from the poor bastards running out of time just a few kms away.
I know that if I turn it on, I’ll be able to hear their panicked voices, cries for mercy and later of anguish as they live their last moments in sheer horror. Despite that, I’m tempted to turn it on and listen, but I’m not sure if I should. Who will I be if I flip that switch? Who will I be if I don’t? I’ve been thinking about that question for the last five minutes and still haven’t come up with an answer. Instead, I’ve decided to watch the stars in the distance as the blink in and out of sight outward to infinity.

I dunno...the past simple is so...flat. Just lies there. But I'll think about it. Never let it be said that I'm not open to criticism. Besides, as long as the shrink checks off on these things, I'm cool.

Plus, it's something to do before taking jaunts out to probe down sites, so there's that. Maybe I'll do the next one as a photo collage...

Thank you!

I find your dedication to literary criticism charming and refreshing. A bright spot of refinement in these coarser capsuleer times.

I never tune the communicator to indiscriminately intercept transmissions like cries for mercy of pleas for lives so I do not get distracted while I'm on the hunt.

On that note I should also shut down capsuleer channels except local and militia chat while at it.

Thanks a bunch! And don't sell yourself short. Elegance is highly overrated these days.



It probably says something about me that I was expecting literary criticism or just plain ol' snark rather than moral criticism when I wrote it up.



That's sound advice. Since this incident, I find myself doing less and less listening on the comm in general. I never did turn on the comm to listen in on the yacht. A job's a job, y'know.

I know her. She sours the image of nuns everywhere. Vindictive prude, that's what she is. Goes around snarling at me every time I show my face for even a second. When I am done with business in Arnon she actually bade me farewell with a "Good riddance!".

Since then I had done much to prove her right.

Ironically, I've been proving her right by working for her. For someone who's supposed to be doing humanitarian work, she's sure sent me to kill a lot of rats. Hell, the first guy I was supposed to rescue, some dude named Red died during the rescue mission that she sent me on. Let's just say any faith I had in the nuns was pretty much shattered then (spoiler alert: I didn't have much faith to start out with)

The good news is that she's turned down the volume on the vitriol since I've been working with some of her confederates, and they've been pretty cool so far. Tavis Jak wasn't so bad to talk to and Delphine, the agent out of CreoDron is pretty fun. We caught a few drinks between missions and she's fun to hang out with. Crazy, but fun. Once she got a little tipsy she had stories galore about Sister Stuffy. I won't elaborate.

There was one weird thing though. I told Delph about how hard a time Alitura was giving me and she said something like 'Ah, she must be giving you the full rundown..." I asked her what she meant, but she never did explain. Agents, man. Weirdos.

Who writes their journal on a public forum these days.

Narcissists mostly. The charming and irresistible type.

I'm afraid that my therapist is the culprit from the public forum placement. He originally only wanted me to write five of these, but I'm really digging the responses, so I might just keep writing them until I get banned or published, whichever comes first.

I'm going to try to shorten them though. That last one verged on becoming an Garoun loan contract.

The Lone Rangers

Sometimes, life experiences come at you in weird ways. I’ll set the scene. I was at the Sisters of Eve station after coming back from another task. It was me, Sister Alitura and Corin Risla, a Scope investigative reporter who helped us obtain important information about the drones. The first thing we all noticed was that the Gallente Navy was nowhere to be found because, as it later turned out, a group of Serpents creeps in the next system over. We also noticed that there weren’t really any capsuleers on the station. According to my cousin Emator, the owner of a cafe on the station, they all left with the navy to collect bounties on the pirates.

None of this was problematic at first. It was kind of nice to enjoy a station without a lot of the hubbub that you usually have to deal with. We were sitting around talking about the previous mission when Sister Alitura got a message from station comm. All of the sudden, she turned pale and looked at us. “We’ve got a bit of a problem.”

The ‘bit of a problem’ was a rogue drone hive sitting 15 AU away—the same ihyperintelligent rogue drones that we had been trying to hunt down. I guess they got tired of waiting. Now the desolation that was so comforting moments ago seemed threatening and bleak. “I take it we’re not going to try to get out of here and let CONCORD handle it?” I said, hoping a joke might lighten the mood. We all knew that CONCORD wasn’t going to do anything about it since it had nothing to do with gates or capsuleers-on-capsuleer violence (or money, because you KNOW they take bribes if they’re big enough).

I knew that I was going to be sent out like a sacrificial lamb and I wasn’t even that upset about it. Who else were they going to get? Sister Alitura mentioned that the some of the types of drones that they detected sometimes carried webs. “Stay the hell out of their way,” she said, not that she had to.

A friend of Corin’s had given him a virus that he could upload into the hive and shut it down, but he had to get close enough to do so, which mean we had to take out the web drones, get to the hive and broadcast it while taking out the other drones and hoping no others showed up. Sister Alitura was to watch our backs from the station with her team and we planned to just hope for the best.

It was a little tricky at first because there were way more drones than we expected and the hive was adept at creating more, but we stayed away from the webs and got to the hive eventually. By the time the hive shut down and we began to rip it up, all of the drones were gone and it was all over but the salvaging. Of course, that’s about the time that the capsuleers started showing up with an eye on the salvage, but I have to admit it was nice to have some matter back on the NeoCom. It wasn’t until I got back to the station that I realized how scared and lonely the whole thing had been.

After getting out, Crin and I shared a laugh and a lot of drinks provided by grateful station merchants. Sister Alitura joined us and actually had words of congratulations for us, shockingly enough. She let us know that an infamous pirate named Dagan was behind the whole drone caper and that she knew where he was, but that it could wait. Like a lot of people, she asked me if I felt t exhilarated by taking on the drones alone, but the word that kept coming out of my mouth was ‘exhausted.’ All I wanted to do was sleep for hours. It was at that moment that I realized that I wasn’t cut out to be a hero. A lot of people get off on this kind of thing, live for it even. As for me, I just wanted to raise my hand towards the bar to get their attention and wait on the exhilaration of my next cocktail.