EVE Fiction

Part Two

Rakon & Tee Bone spent the balance of their meal break talking about a future trajectory for a career in the Jita station trading hub. Rakon sought to impress him with the list of important corps that relied upon his department to keep them armed and ready to fight. Tee Bone knew his next report back to Drake Ashigaru Alliance would not be transmitted for another 45 days and his handlers would be very pleased that he now was a full time employee in the munitions handling department.

Three months later:

The agent they had planted in the Jita trading hub station was paying dividends, in the last three weeks alone they had targeted over two hundred families of those intimately involved in the weapons and ammunition supply to the Caldari militia. Bombings and street assassinations made for splashy headlines and since Drake Ashigaru Alliance never sought public credit for their actions, as an entity, law enforcement had not a clue as to who they were. In the media they were attributed as “Gallente” terrorists and nothing more. To the survivors of their attacks they identified themselves as retribution for the deaths their relative's actions in the arms trade had wrought upon them. Slowly almost organically the word began to spread that the families of those involved in the arms trade were no longer safe in the Caldari state. The threat was real and not exclusive to those in the higher echelons of society, every class of person from janitors & dock workers to executives & investors had been targeted.

Although those involved in the arms business in the Caldari state did not immediately en mass resign and start careers doing something else the program was having it's desired effect, wage increases had spiked across the boards for those people working for arms manufacturers, which in turn meant their profits were taking a hit. After a group of senior citizens who had their retirement funds entangled with arms stocks had been viciously murdered casual investment income was down by thirty percent in arms related stocks. The simple notes left behind were always of the same theme “Those who deal death shall be dealt the same!”. It was a unique terrorist campaign because it was so narrow and targeted in who it singled out, the media in it's zeal to capture headlines and viewer/ readers was the main way knowledge of their activities and the fear it engendered spread across the Caldari state.

To insure they were not back tracked the information gathered by the undercover agents was never directly acted upon, instead a secondary investigation of the family relations and the contacts of those signing for and ordering arms supplies for the militia were tracked and targeted. So if your brother or mother worked in the arms business supplying the Caldari militia you became a prime target. Needless to say it caused tension in the families of those employed in the Caldari arms industry from top to bottom. Since the “Death Dealers Dealt Death” campaign began over seventy thousand Caldari citizens had been assassinated, a very small number when compared to their general population but the private neocom site that tracked the deaths linked by the cryptic notes left behind or mailed to the families afterward, Death Dealers Dealt Death nicknamed Double Double Dee, had over 18 million visits a week, and the blogger who had started tracking the assassinations had become a rising star on the neocom.

Joachim Sandovsker had a solid background in journalism but had never been able to land the really good career starting job that he wanted so he began blogging about the crime rates and the unsolved murders that were a natural statistical inevitability based upon population size, economic issues, and a myriad of other societal, genetic, and psychological triggering factors. He had developed good contacts withing law enforcement and never ever made them look bad, quite the opposite he publicly spoke of expanding police powers to stem the rise in all types of crime. It was a stroke of luck that had alerted him to the “Death Dealers Dealt Death” campaign, a suspect in another unsolved murder had become collateral damage in a bombing assassination of an arms dealer's sister and brother in law. Joachim had been close enough to the bombing to arrive before the law enforcement officials had completely cordoned off the area, and had captured on vid the cryptic notes left behind “Those who deal death shall be dealt the same!”, and the gallows humor comment by an investigating officer of “Death Dealers Dealt Death” had a certain grim charming ring to it, he even named the neocom site after the comment. In the ensuing months he had become a standard feature on vidcasts as an expert on the Gallente terrorist campaign against the arms industry, and he had a book deal in the final stages of negotiations that would en capsulize his findings to date. His strongest detractors were of course the PR people of the arms industry who claimed he was conflating unrelated events and possibly copy cat crimes into one grand conspiracy without any real tangible proof. But the louder they protested his conclusions the more people noticed the facts themselves.

It was the strangest turn of events that found Joachim Sandovsker strolling around the munitions handling department with Rakon Kim conducting background information interviews on employees in the arms industry.

Joachim Sandovsker
So Rakon you have no concern about
your safety here in Jita keeping the brave
and loyal capsuleers armed to defend the
Caldari State?

Rakon Kim
Well I am neither fool nor hero, of course
I have concerns, who wouldn't these days
but as a Caldari I have to do my small part
to help keep the State safe so we show up
and just do our jobs the best we can.

Joachim Sandovsker
Is it becoming difficult to retain employees
and get new hires to work here?