EVE Fiction

Rorin Zaytsev was a hard man. He was a hard man because his life had been hard; the scars on his back could attest to that. The broad shouldered Vherokior had grown up on Arndor Aham Manufactory Rho - Armaments. From the age of six, he had worked to build weapons for his Amarr masters. He started with the side arms, ornate laser pistols for officers. His tiny hands had worked to imprint the scroll work and filigree into the polished brass plating. He had also written bits of Scripture onto the weapons, too. Yes, Rorin knew the Scriptures well, like he knew the Amarr. He loathed them both equally.

When Rorin was a teenager, he helped assemble the carbines and shoulder weapons. By his late teens, the well muscled man was working on assembling the squad weapons, heavy lasers and guided missile launchers. It seemed like he was doomed to a life of assembling the death tools that his Amarr masters would use to subjugate his own people. And, had he not laid out his overseer one day, he would have been.

The assault on the Ni-Kunni overseer was not something that could be overlooked. Ni-Kunni were the lowest citizens in the Empire, yes, but they were still head and shoulders above any Minmatar slave like him. His holder had decided that the best punishment was to make him an armorer slave for a ship of battle in the Imperial Fleet. He was to be infected with the Vitoxin retrovirus and condemned to spend the rest of his life in the belly of one of the Golden fleet.

A curious thing happened. He was never infected with the virus. His original holder who sold him was under the impression that the Navy would do it themselves. The Navy was under the impression that the holder had done it before they acquired Rorin. The naval overseer, a mean-spirited petty officer gave him his Vitoc every day, and every day, Rorin flushed it into the toilet.

The ruse might have eventually been discovered but not for the intervention of a Gallente battlecruiser squadron. The squadron was responding to a distress call of a merchant ship when Rorin’s ship, an Apocalypse-class with the name of Gloriana, challenged them for being in Amarrian space. The hardheaded captain of TES Gloriana opened fire without waiting for the Gallente response. Only fifty-seven of TES Gloriana’s crew survived. In some sort of poetic justice, all were Minmatar slaves.

The Gallente rescued them, though, and they were slaves no more. Rorin was given the option to go to the Republic or to seek asylum in the Federation. He chose the latter, without considering the Republic. In appreciation, Rorin joined the Federal Navy, serving for four years. Once he felt that he had repaid his debt, Rorin settled down, taking a station job as an ammo tech. There he met his wife, a Gallente woman named Alecta. They married after a brief courtship. Their first and only child, Taisia, was born just before their first anniversary.

Rorin quickly understood what the rise of capsuleers meant. He moved out to the lawless parts of null security with his family. He made sure to take only the safe assignments on stations, which were never destroyed, only captured. Eventually, he wound up working on a station controlled by Goonfleet. To Rorin, it was a job like any other. It put food on his family’s table and O2 in their cabin.

As Rorin worked for these bees, he got to know them better. He found their ideals and their mindset to be enlightening. These Goons, these communists, had a vision he approved of. He stayed with them, through Syndicate, Delve and into Deklein. He had moved up, too. He was now the Manager of Magazine Seven in VFKHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN (Goons were known for their eccentric naming conventions). It was the middle of the year in YC112.



No one had expected an attack on their home systems. The Northern Coalition had fallen to the Drone Russians, despite the attempts of Goonswarm to try and backstop a feckless Morsus Mihi and their allies. No one had expected such a brazen attempt to cripple the Clusterfuck Coalition so soon after the fall of the NC. Rorin was sitting down to lunch when the klaxons began to wail.

“Hostile fleet in Goon space,” announced a much too calm voice. “All stations set condition one.”

Red strobes flashed, and the organized chaos of everyday station life turned into a frantic scramble. Rorin left his Jin-Mei noodles untouched on the table and ran to the lift. He pressed the button for the magazines’ level and then pressed it again when the lift didn’t move fast enough for his taste.

“Starbase damage reported in VFK-IV, YAO-XJ and DKUK-G. Cynojammer under attack,” said that much too calm voice.

The lift opened up to the magazines and Rorin ran to the entrance to Magazine Seven. There were MTACs and forklift trucks already moving. Massive missiles and ammo boxes were taken off racks and shoved into high-speed lifts to the hangar levels. It was not Rorin’s job to move them, though, but to supervise. He looked at his dataslate. Almost two thirds of his full staff were on hand already, with the rest trickling in.

The noise was deafening. Industrial machines were made for brute force and speed. They were effective. No design time had been spent on unnecessary features like silence. His slate reported the total amount of ammo requested and he frowned. It was too low. For a full fleet sortie, the ammo expenditures would be much higher.

“YAO-XJ cynojammer incapacitated.” The calm voice interrupted Rorin’s thoughts. This invasion would not be stifled. Goons were going to have to fight tooth and nail to repel the invaders. He sat at his desk and pinged the Logistics Subdirector of Ammunition.

“How bad is it, Lys?” Rorin asked, almost having to yell over the noise.