EVE Fiction

So, it's been a while since I've been on eve and it's been slightly longer since I wrote wildly-fluff-inaccurate fiction. I recently started playing again and I've already gotten literally a request to start writing again. My fan was so intent on me writing again he literally told me to start writing again. So, to that end, I've written a short story. If people like it then let me know and I'll write more. If you don't like it then.... well... back button is up there.

I've tried to not skewer fluff as much as I used to, but I will probably still anger some CCP fluff writers but... I find I don't care that much.

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“Highly advanced piece of technology my ass,” Sam Kere grumbled over the comm. “I don't care if it took months of research and years of design, then the corp's best engineering monkeys an entire system of Mercoxit to build. This Hulk's still a piece of junk.”

Chuckles filled the fleet's communication channel for a couple seconds. Kim 'Inty' Aroth even smirked, though to her even the manufactured sounds coming from her fellow pod pilots still rung hollow. The creatures suspended in the neural gel were hardly human by any standard, their mouths covered with masks, unable to produce a sound while contained within the pods. By simply trying to speak they could transmit on any number of channels, their voices manufactured by the pods. It was possible to simplify the transmissions, without encoding the thoughts into a voice, but the creatures which called themselves human liked to hear voices of others.

Kim had no idea how her brother, Arc, stood it. The only reason she was out here in the middle of nowhere was to earn a living. At first watching the massively powerful beams of energy rip into the asteroids, sucking any useful ores from it will all the ease and grace of a surgeon, yet all the force of a typhoon. Useless bits of rock were scattered to the heavens, the shields of the mining fleet not even registering the impacts of the tiny bits of flotsam. But after months of raking in entire belts of rocks, piling them into freighters which were closer to giant space faring boxes than ships, with only ten hours a day to herself back aboard the corporation's station in the system, that awe of the power she wielded had faded.

Actually, Kim thought, I know how he deals with being out of citadel space for so long, he's got a more interesting job then I do. He is a combat pilot, while I'm stuck here mining.

Then again, there was a combat pilot in the mining fleet, piloting some Amar battleship, and he wasn't doing much. Hell, he was doing even less than Kim was, just sitting there, babysitting a couple dozen exhumers.

“All mining ships return to station. Repeat, all mining ships return to station at best speed.”

Great, Kim thought, queuing commands to her ship, full hold and now they have us running a another drill.

Those thoughts didn't last long, additional contacts appeared on her limited sensors, even as the mining lasers cooled down. Before she could come up with any more snide comments which would never be said the battleship safe guarding them fired. A beam of coherent energy cracked the skies, intercepting an incoming frigate, splitting it in half. But even as the wreckage from that frigate blew apart, more ships descended on the fleet.

The mining ships had no weapons themselves, but they were hardly defenseless. Combat drones swarmed out to meet the incoming hostiles, missiles, shells and rail-rounds impacted those surrounding her ship. A thought about the dozens of other ships under attack passed through the back of her mind, but it was not her focus. Her guardian battleship shook as rounds began to impact it's armor, the shields of an Amar battleship being a second thought to the armor. Arc had a joke or two about that, but now was not the time.

Suddenly, the energy Kim had been pouring into the engines and warp drive vanished. A single frigate shot towards her, draining her ship's power like she had been draining the rocks of ore moments earlier. She shot commands to her drones, recalling them to deal with this new threat. Were she still human adrenalin would be coursing through her system, her heart rate skyrocketing. But the pod countered this natural reaction, dampening her heart rate, and countering the adrenalin. However, for all it's wonders, it didn't help with the fear. If anything it made it worse, the shaking of hands, wide eyes, enhanced senses all helped her combat the fear. Now she was scared, but without a sense of ability to combat it. Everything seemed to move too fast, but even with that the drones were too slow. Directed fire began to hit her shields, unlike the stray rounds which had swept the fleet earlier this was focused on her. Without power to boost her shields, with the jammers preventing her warp drive from locking onto anything, there was little she could do.

Well, she thought in what she was sure was the last minutes of her first life, at least wasn't the end. She would be resurrected, brought back, to return to her dreary job of mining.

Then she awoke. Gasping she stumbled forward, why was she on her feet? It must have been some kind of dream to startle to her feet. She fell to her knees and began to cough. Why was she coughing? Her skin was covered in a gel. Neural gel? Did she fall asleep in her pod?

“Easy there sis, easy,” a calm voice said, a hand fell upon her shoulder, helping her back to her feet. “Dieing may hurt, but living is worse.”