EVE Fiction

Personal Log: Sarah Flinnley 10.11 YC 116
Hek VII – Tribal Liberation Force Logistic Support

Landing on the Sahtogas gate in Oyonata I see it flare. An Ares working for the slavers militia sheds cloak almost immediately and begins moving. My computer, set to automatically jump when I land initiates the jumping procedure not allowing me to so much as catch the pilot’s name.

It doesn’t matter.

Tired of flying kiting ships I had picked up several Rifters in Hek. Flying an unfamiliar ship, in an unfamiliar manner the interceptor is not what I would choose to cut my teeth on. Earlier I had passed up an Imperial Navy Slicer for similar reasons.

The interceptor had other ideas. Though I didn’t dawdle and immediately set course for the next star gate in my course, the star gate behind me flared before I could align spewing out the Ares. I sighed a rather short breath of relief as I entered warp. Landing on the gate into Tannakan, I was only mildly surprised to find the Ares decelerating from warp immediately behind me. I initiated the jump and as the gate cooled down I floated in space within the Tannakan system waiting.

I didn’t need the gate’s massive discharge of energy to inform me that I was followed. The game had begun, and in it I had become the mouse.

I know how to play this game. The mouse either escapes or gets eaten. I can be a mouse.

I don’t move, allowing the particles from my recent warp trip to cloak me as I watch the Ares fly a tight circle around the gate, looking for me. Waiting for me to move. One circle is completed, the Ares doesn’t move more then 20 kilometers away from me. I wait. As it approaches 20 kilometers again, I move.

Already setting my computer to the next gate I align and warp off before the Ares has time to change it’s trajectory to match mine, target me, and disrupt my warp all at the same time. I want to say this is skill, and that I am simply that good. But the truth will catch up to me sooner rather then latter.

Jumping into Anka the cat is still on my heals. All right! Now I need to do something. I don’t want to engage. I’m pretty sure the Ares would destroy me, and damn it!, I want to see how this things fly’s before it dies! I look for a group of celestials aligned with a gate. I find a group, but the decision making process and the Ares flight path don’t allow for any room to wait. I can almost feel the particles begin to fade as I make my decision and set course, the Ares only 13 short kilometers away.

My ship aligns but I can already tell that my escape is not to be as my computer informs me that the Ares is locking me. Before I can align, he’s disrupting my warp preventing me from making good my escape.

The mouse has been caught! And she’s smiling.

Before returning the target lock I overload my afterburner, scam, and web initiating a vector that would collide with the Ares if neither of us made any course corrections. Shortly after my afterburner ignited I had the Ares targeted, my own web and warp scrambler applied to him.

Forget the mouse! I’m a cat damn it!

Perhaps sensing that I wasn’t just another piece of meat for his guns to dissect, or perhaps his combat sequences are simply different then mine, but only them after I had him rather immobile did he web me. I overloaded my guns, including the rocket launcher I had managed to squeeze onto the ship and began showing this Ares my fangs.

I initiated a close orbit, 700 meters and stopped overloading my afterburner and propulsion jamming devices. He wasn’t going anywhere and it was clear by his drastic lack of speed that his propulsion mods where disabled by my scam. I was still smiling as my low shield alarm went off, causing me to immediately trigger my armor repairer. Perhaps I should have waited, I don’t know. I told you this was a new fit for me!

However fast he’s chewing through me, I’m chewing through him. And it looks like he doesn’t have any type of repairing devices installed. I almost breath a sigh of relief when his ship enters hull, but the damned gate we where sitting on flares and the same Imperial Navy Slicer I had passed up earlier emerges and immediately sets out to help the Ares.

I am undeterred. Not changing targets I finish the Ares off, which allowed the Imperial Navy Slicer to pull range, orbiting me at just under 20 kilometers. The Ares ruptures, venting gas and plasma into space, ejecting it’s pilot. I turn my attention to the backup, only to find that there is almost nothing to do. I was caught. I started burning towards the sun my first step in attempting to slingshot myself into his path and putting me once again in the fight, but it’s not to be.

The corpses of the crewmembers unlucky enough not to make it to their escape capsules when the slavers lasers slice through the last vestiges of my ships armor and hull joined the millions of others floating in the cosmic winds. I don’t wait around as my pod, like their corpses, finds itself in space. I warp to the sun, only to bounce off several thousand kilometers from it to a different gate. My course home set.

I open up my files, and modify my notes on the Rifter’s fit.

It had proven itself to me.