EVE Fiction

"My name is Earlar and I am the captain of the rust bucket hauler I named Pancake, making critical food deliveries to Federation stations. I was at the slippery slope tavern on the seventh deck of the fed navy assembly plant in Dodixie. I was just relaxing and having a nice drink when two guys next to me started loudly complaining about how it took station controllers a little bit longer to clear their ships for docking that morning. These two, which I found out were spoiled capsuleer’s, were upset about the extra twenty seconds it took for their clearance and then they went on a rant about how awful the controllers were, how bad the computer systems were, and everything was a big issue for them. So, being the captain of one of the food delivery haulers that came in that morning I decided to give them a piece of my mind." Earlar explained to a kind man who was walking him to his ship after a night of heavy drinking.

“Alright children, why don’t you lighten up a little and come back to reality aye?” Earlar said to them after downing two shots of courage.

The two nerfers, as every day folk like to refer to the pod pilots as, snapped their heads around so fast Earlar thought they might be cyborgs.

“Who the hell are you?” One of them said, the one with the fancy goggles pulled up on his forehead who obviously thought it made him look cool, but it didn’t.

“You two are croaking like a couple of feral slave hounds and about what? As if you nerfers don’t get all the attention and special treatment already from station services.” Earlar barked.

“You got one minute to explain yourself before I put my monocle up your ass mister.” The other said with a hostile gesture.

“Alright fine, I got five kids and a screaming wife that is just about as spoiled as you two waiting for my entire pay check back home. I have to run a line of cargo from one side of Odixie to the other in record time with barely enough time to brush my teeth and wipe myself clean each morning. Yeah six days a week. You get the fanciest ships in the entire galaxy with money to spare on hookers and repairs while my ship has not seen the shop in months and feels like it will fall apart each time it goes into warp. The stations give you nerfers dedicated traffic lanes while the rest of us logistics haulers are stuck in the delivery lines for hours. Your computers don’t even register that we exist and controllers route us around you so you don’t have to bother! So then I come in here for a much needed drink and have to listen to you two babies , hell your worse than my kids I swear.” Earlar finished , taking as much time as he needed as the tension built up inside him knowing he probably wouldn’t walk out of the tavern alive so he got it all off his shoulders now.

He was stunned to see the two men laughing when he was finished and they both bought him a round of drinks.
“You know what dude, you just made my day have a round on me”

The other capsuleer stepped up and gave Earlar a firm slap on the back “I’ll do one better, here is a note for ten million isk, go get some work done on your ship, hell maybe buy a new one and something for the brats at home aye?”

Earlar was stunned but once he saw they were serious he just started laughing partly out of complete relief and also the look on their face knowing they were laughing at the look on his.

That night the three of them were laughing over stories each had to tell. The sad part of the story is that Earlar never made it back to his old rust bucket or his family that night. You see drunks have a tendency to get the interest of pirates when they tell jokes or run their mouths. So after Earlar parted ways with his two new friends, a capsuleer with a red bandana that was sitting alone next to their table offered to walk Earlar to his ship. When a pirate finds out a man has ten million isk in his pocket and no love for pod pilots, it tends to put the pirate in motion to get what he wants. So the capsuleer that offered to walk Earlar to his ship and listen to his rantings had plans other than kindness, Earlar barely realized how far he had fallen down a ventilation shaft before the blades made quick work of his little body.

Such is the tale of so many millions of average people who work for every isk they get and have to watch powerful capsuleers whose greatest concern is what to spend their millions on. That is the end of poor old Earlar's story.