EVE Fiction

This is a short piece (of a larger body) concerning two of the characters I'm working into an Eve story. I'm afraid I tend to mess with the science a little. Don't hate.

HOT FUDGE

“Arrrgh, this is bullshit!”

Buntings voice, course and loud growled into Rif’s head via his Fortuna Wave Receiving Implant. Although the device automatically adjusted the volume to an acceptable level he still winced at his partner’s frustrated outburst.

“Have you tried…” Rif started.

“If you tell me to try turning it off and on again I swear I’m going to climb out of here and shoot you.”

Rif smiled. It was an empty threat even if it were real. The second Bunting opened a door, portal or window on his ship the radioactivity from the gas cloud they were hidden inside would turn both him and his Brutix inside out.

Drones from both ships were busy sweeping to and fro across the Brutix’s hull, looking for the fault that had brought the Gallante ship to a dead stop. Fortunately Bunting had the good sense when alerted to the problem to steered for the cloud that now obscured them just in time. Being dead in space in null sec was the same as being actually dead.

“I was going to ask if you had tried reversing the polarity of the aft gyro”

“What?” Bunting replied, he had heard, but was processing the information within his rage clouded mind. “Polarity?”

“Yeah, it might kick the condensers back up.”

Bunting was quiet for a few seconds. Rif panned the viewcam to his friend’s ship and zoomed in. He could see Bunting tapping away at his HUD. A few moments later he felt his Deimos shudder a little as the powerful engines of the Brutix vented, sendin ripples of gravimetric disturbance across the cloud.

“Yeah!” Bunting shouted. Once again Rif’s implant earned its fee. “Hell yeah!”

The Drones jumped back from the ship as though surprised by the sudden burst of life from its engines. Rif recalled his units and his repair drones quickly scuttled back into their bay.

“Can we go now?” Rif asked in a childish tone.

“Damn straight amigo, all systems are reporting green Oh green Oh! Must have been some kind of build up on those condensers, I’ll get em checked when we dock at J-Tax.”

“OK. Cool. Let’s quit this cloud before it eats my paint job.” Rif swept up his Navi-Sys to the HUD and began to plot a course for the J-Tax station. Then stopped. He brushed the Navi-Sys away and bought up data from the scanning module.

“Desiree, there’s something out there. Passive scan.” Desiree was AI that ran all the things that didn’t usually need Rif’s attention on his Deimos, ‘Hot Fudge’. She was cool, calm and computationally quick. All the C's that Rif liked.

‘Scan is operational. Processing data.’ Desiree stated in a melodic tone.

Bunting’s voice whispered into his head “What we got buddy? Want me to cut the drive?”

“Not sure, but no, don’t kill the engines. It will alter the background noise if the target is actively scanning and its equipment is funky.” Funky meant good, expensive. Funky could well mean profit.

“Roger that” Bunting replied.

Rif knew that even if the pilot was indeed actively scanning and picked up the noise of the Brutix against the cloud it would be all that he could hear as the Hot Fudge’s engines had been dormant for the last hour, they had cooled as Bunting had battled with his maintenance system. They would see only one ship. One threat.

Desiree came back with her report. "The vessel is a Velator class Frigate. Pilot is registered as Pere Stufe. No bounty is assigned to this license. Pilot licence active for eighty six days."

“Balls” Rif said.

The report had been forwarded to Buntings Com-Link. “What the hell is a noob doing eight jumps away from the nearest gate and twelve from a station that will reprocess his liver along with his ship?”

“Probably lost” Rif replied. As the ship was no possible threat to either of them, just one of Rif’s Drones could take it down, he decided to ping it with his main scanner and see what was in its cargo. Sometimes new pilots were used as mules to carry illicit cargo. It wasn’t usually worth the cost of missile to take out a low end chassis like a Velator so most Privateers would let them go on their way.

“Desiree hit that ship with a solid ping. Lets see what Mr Stufe is carrying in his little cargo hold”

Desiree pointed the powerful scanning modules focus at the Velator and easily overcame its system. The manifest revealed was revealed on the Deimos HUD, a few canisters of Scordite and a single unit of Bistot.

“Whoo! New guy hit the big time. He’s got a lump of the big B!” Rif grinned.

Bunting roared “Ha man, hot damn! Dude is flying through hot space in a garbage can for a piece of ore that wouldn’t pay the insurance on my haircut”

Rif joined in with the laughter and swept the manifest from his screen. “Ok lets get out this place and leave Mr Stufe and his Bistot alone.”

“Roger that.” Bunting replied and performed a quick system check to make sure that his engines were fully functional. “Soon as we hit J-Tax I’m gonna get me a..”

“Wait…” Rif said quickly. “Wait…wait…wait.”

Bunting held his finger over his HUD as though frozen. “Coming in from sector four one, four two.” Rif said evenly.

Bunting brought up his scanner and saw the ship indicators flashing, two objects moving in quickly towards the Velator. Both pilots ran diagnostics hit their passive scans. Rif’s more powerful module quickly delivered the information.

“Sansha’s buddy, coming hard and fast. Looks like two cruisers”

As Rif related what he could see Buntings system confirmed it.

“You think they seen us?” Bunting said.

“No. They are going for the cowboy” Rif replied gravely.