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EvE Fan Fiction - Outpost 9.
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SeDSilva
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#1 - 2012-12-04 18:48:17 UTC  |  Edited by: SeDSilva
Designation: Outpost 9.


The Commanding officer felt his grip tighten around the metal rail, the cold steel sapping the warmth from his hands, but still they were sweating. His knuckles turning white, his eyes dilating with a quiver as they grew wider. His breath fell shallow, and his mouth parting ever wider as his jaw lowered, trembling.

The bridge had plunged into deep crimson light, accompanied with the wailing sound of panicked alarms that shrieked across all decks of the ship. A cold shiver of pure fear slithered up his spine, as another raspy gasp of air escaped quietly from between his lips, drawing a faint cloud. Environmental control had just failed, and the ships shields would soon follow. Engines cut out one by one, and the reactor core was starting to flicker out like candle flame in the wind.

He knew his ship well enough to feel what was going on, even before the bridge staff voiced out alerts and developments; it had been his home for 40 years.

He knew every noise, every little creak and groan and sense of vertigo caused when the ship started to accelerate. As he gazed on in horror he felt that she too was dying. She was drowning in energy waves blasting against her hull violently, readings that were off the charts, immeasurable.

A standard deep space survey mission had just become an event that would forever hold significance in the history of EVE as it was known by the MILSTAR Corporation. Long into the future, even when interstellar travel was common place. The mapping of the EVE System was still a feat mankind had yet to accomplish collectively, and the Cartographer project was one of the many pioneering projects funded by multiple megacorperations to better understand the universe, as well as make good PR.

Sometimes the good Captain thought PR was more their goal then the actual fruit of the labor they were charged with.

“Just another Marketing stunt for Public Relations” he thought, only a few hours earlier.

Unfortunately for the Captain and the crew of the Grey Vale, it would be the last survey mission they were to be engaged in.

Shields were stripped away in a matter of seconds, and soon it was ripping the hull apart. Alarms grew louder as if the ship were screaming in pain before failing themselves.

In his last moments of being alive, Captain Arbrook along with all 534 crew, were burnt up instantly, or sucked out into the hungry void of space, dying in the silent and cold lifeless vacuum. The last lights flickered away, and all that remained was a charred out hull, tumbling into the great abyss.


5 Hours Later - Milstar Corp - Head Office.

“Exploded?” the figure in the chair repeated knotting his hands together on the cold black marble table, learning forward with a muffled snarl of creaking leather from his high back chair. The lights were on dim, just the way he liked it. Some spot lights painted the walls, only illuminating some abstract works of art, some aggressive in form, others more subtle. The air conditioning droned like a distant roar in the background, but not loud enough to drown out the uncomfortable silence that followed, as the director of operations gulped, as if his collar was suddenly choking him.

“I’m afraid so sir.” the director croaked nervously, quickly ordering the documents on his data pad wishing he could retreat into the pad somehow and drift away with the information, or anything that didn’t involve him standing in that dark room.

“Please enlighten me, Mr. Peedly.” The executive leaned back in his chair again, keeping his hands melded together. He was already sounding annoyed, he had about another 20 meetings lined up and from the sounds of things the incident report that just burst into his office may have just ruined his schedule like a hammer crashing into a glass figure of order and precision.

Mr. Peedly, adjusted his collar again, and brushed his fingers over the display, they were already trembling slightly, and even though the executives face could not be seen, he felt the cold hard glare on him, and he knew that the executive was expecting a damn good explanation.

“She was tasked with surveying the uncharted wormholes, Sir. We lost contact with her about an hour after she jumped into the system.”

“Do continue, Mr. Peedly.”

“The search and rescue teams were able to recover the hulk of what was left of her Sir, but she was several million kilometers from her original entry point. They also reported heavy amounts of fresh debris in the area, mostly shell casings and the remains of the Grey Vale."

“So what are you saying... it was attacked by pirates?”

“As an educated guess Sir, I suspect an attack. The spent shell casings would rule out system malfunction. For a ship to be wrecked as badly as she was, and end up millions of clicks out of her original insertion point, it would suggest something catastrophic must have occurred.”

The executive leaned forward again, the leather creaking more slowly this time, and another brief silence filled the room.

“I don’t like guesses, Mr. Peedly, I like facts. Cold...hard...facts. I expect a full incident report within an hour on my desk. I want casualty lists, and a manifest of all the parts that made that ship tick. I also want all the families contacted and informed of the losses. Do I make myself clear?”

Mr. Peedly nodded firmly, managing to squeeze out a feeble.
“Yes Sir.....perfectly, sorry to of disturbed you.”

He tucked the data pad under his arm and did a clean half turn on his feet before marching hastily out the board room, feeling the glare stab into the back of his head until he turned the corner down a corridor, equally ornate in typical Caldari black and grey marble sculptures and other works of art, dimly lit in corporate gloom and decor, relieving himself with a small sigh of relief.


More coming soon...
SeDSilva
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#2 - 2012-12-04 18:48:26 UTC  |  Edited by: SeDSilva
Mr. Peedly never looked forward to marching into that room with bad news, he felt at any given moment the executive would one day just pull out a gun and put him on the floor there and then, have his body flushed out an airlock and no questions would be asked. He knew that both men held an unspoken respect for each other though. He was the only one with enough balls to actually give the unpleasant news to the man directly. Other staff members on that department would rather just send an email with a wince and pray the thunder didn’t come down on their head.

There was another reason Mr. Peedly was respected, not only by the executive but by the department as a whole. He never asked any questions about his job. You told him to do it, and he did it, to the letter. Sometimes he was seen as a bit of a robot, and if it wasn’t for the fact he sweated so much when nervous, people would be forgiven if they mistook him for an android. (Another favorable but expensive corporate asset.)

The report was duely produced within the hour on the desk of the executive. Every component that the Grey Vale was fitted with was listed, including bolt sizes and chassis numbers. A team of "Crisis and Incident" investigators looked over the lists several times, with great scrutiny, but nothing could be held accountable for human error or failure of hardware.

It would be logged as an unclassified incident, and be buried in a library of reports. The families would never be told of how their loved ones died, or what any confirmation on the actual cause of the destruction of the ship.

It was common place to find these kinds of cases, beyond an incident report, only really filed for insurance claim purposes; there was little care for material gain or life. Crew could be replaced for a dime a dozen, as well as ships easily replaceable of a production line that endlessly belched out frigates to cruisers at relatively low cost.

As Mr. Peedly sat at his terminal, and started filing the insurance claim forms for the accounting team and placing a restock order for a survey cruiser, the report he made was redirected by the executive, and was handed over to the special tasks and affairs department.

As the executive sat in his chair, taking a rare 5 minute break, he gazed out his large panoramic window, with a vista that overlooked a top dollar view of the planet below. The blue sheet of clouds and sea, starkly contrasted against the black abyss of space. His moment of brief sanctuary was disturbed by a subtle ring tone from the conference call terminal on his desk.

He passed a sigh, placed his coffee cup on the table and spun his chair around away from the window, pressing the button, his secretary spoke over the speaker.

“Sorry for disturbing you sir.”

“Never mind that, what is it?” he asked, never one for small talk, and always straight to the point.

“A Mr. Lanovik is here to see you, Sir”

“Am I supposed to know who he is, does he even have an appointment?” he asked sternly.

“No Sir, but he insists the matter is quiet urgent” she poked back.

“Very well, send him in” he resigned, and spun in his chair, coffee in hand to face the door. He was already annoyed that his schedule was disrupted previously with the Grey Vale incident, and now an unscheduled appointment. His tone of voice grew even more so sour.

The doors slid open and a man dressed in a very sleek black suit strode in carrying an equally sleek black briefcase. Before words were exchanged, the dark stranger placed the suitcase on the table, and opened it after a confirmed thumbprint scan on the case.

“You better have a damn good reason for disturbing my day Mr. Lanovik” the executive said with a cold and bitter demeanor.

“I apologize for the inconvenience, I’ll be out of your hair very soon” Mr. Lanovik spoke sincerely before lifting a silenced pistol to the executive, who didn’t even have time to react before his brains jettisoned out the back of his skull in a grim spattering shortly followed by his lifeless corpse hitting the floor.

Lanovik paused a brief moment, he knelt down and checked the pulse of the Ex-Executive of the Milstar Corporation and made sure he was dead. It wouldn’t take long for another eager mind to fill his shoes, staff rotation was pretty swift even on the executive level.

Perhaps a small formal funeral would be held, an obituary read, and a small gathering of people who could be bothered to care. Soon the Executive, would become another name on a slab of stone in some cemetery somewhere.

Lanovik however had no time for such thoughts, placing his pistol back in the briefcase he glided over to the desk of the deceased and removed the flight recording data and ship manifest of the Grey Vale, running a quick scan to confirm it was the data he was after on the data pad. He removed all other traces of it from the network within minutes. Slipping it smoothly into the suitcase, he closed it shut and headed back toward the door.

The assassin left in the fashion he arrived, striding with a dark confidence and collective calm. He closed the boardroom doors behind him and promptly headed for the secretary’s desk.

“Was there anything else I could help you with today, Mr. Lanovik?”

He passed a casual smile, and gently replied.

“The Executive has made it very clear that he wishes not to be disturbed any further today, and I would avoid heading in there any time soon, he appears to have a lot on his mind”

He spoke with a degree of reassurance, and ended his statement with a slow nod.

He passed others dressed in their morbidly dark suits, holding their data pads and other items that oiled the great machine of the Caldari Corporation. As he left for the hanger, the air-con continued to drone in the background, and the machine rolled on.

It would be hours before they realized the events that had transpired.
SeDSilva
School of Applied Knowledge
Caldari State
#3 - 2012-12-04 18:48:38 UTC
Reserved