EVE Fiction

For a moment Evet's eyes rest on her Toumaci assault rifle, on an LED winking at her. We're still here, still watching it insists. On the roof the team are listening, in shifts. There'd been little else to do up there in the cold. It's their job to keep her alive, stamping to get the blood to their feet they all agree, admiringly, that she's done well. "Yep I’d like Evet’s job, that Gaunia’s smoking hot."

The LED winks on. The beauty of the deadman switch is the signal is an absence of signal. An automatic fail-safe. Don't be alarmed, it winks. Fear not, you've been spared the unplanned vicissitudes of 'enhanced interrogation' and other possible operational contingencies, executed with extreme prejudice; but if it stops, what then? Does it say: be reassured we did all we could to manage the situation? No, it just stops, so you'd better not panic and just get out.

At this altitude and latitude, taking into account the Coriolis Effect and friction, the wind speed is tremendous. They squeeze hot food through straws. Avio relays the data to the drop ship. Even though they agree Morrel's all right, 15 hours is a long time to wait in Mesospheric conditions. He pulls at his nose, at least you can work with her. She may be tiny but she's implacable - more than a match for Octeyncaere. He checks his carabina leaning against the strong zonal wind. Next he checks his breathing apparatus. The pay is low sure, by fraction standards, but everyone gets comp-medical, which includes a monthly scan and a clone, thats' all of us not just command staff. Avio may have no memory of his daughter's last birthday but Jessie has her dad.

Evet: "We in the Fraction are defined not by geography or nationality, but by a long term commitment to be loyal to certain values. As a disposition it's decisive: it determines our actions even if it doesn't necessarily specify how to act in every situation. There is a paradox that arises when there is no upper bound on the potential rewards from very low probability events. Because some probability distribution functions have an infinite expected value, think hornets. It's reasonable to assume that some of the pilots we've yet to meet will be part of this process, comrades who'll help to realise the anarchist future we anticipate, so we are circumspect, at least until they've excluded themselves. After all, we have time enough."

Gaunia: "That's idealism, you're moralising. People might say that you're just unable to face reality, unable to see things as they are."

Evet: "Things as they really are, please. ... Whether a phenomena is a thing, or a process has to do with your frame of reference. A mountain is a thing to a man, but to a continent it's a collision, an event; to a planet thrust tectonics is a process. Life just isn't the brief thing it once was. Crucially you're no longer able to kill an idea by killing the man. The conditions have changed and we're going to be around a lot longer than you might realise."

Gaunia: "So what, are you expecting everyone to belong to the fraction in the end, sounds like some grisly Amarrian afterlife."

Evet: "No of course not, not all. But you can imagine how this makes ideas the target, rather than people. Especially those people who aren't yet free, who haven't come into their inheritance; those who don't hold these ideas but are being exploited by others to prosecute a war that's not in their interest. Our NRDS emphasises innocence as a causal rather than a moral category, because innocence is firstly causal. It's the absence of the pertinent direct causal connection.”

Gaunia: "If that were true then most of the pilots you kill would have fired upon you, but they haven't have they, so it's not causal is it?"

Evet: "If that's your way of reminding me that innocence is also a status based generalisation decided by intent, ok. An individual joining an organisation actively engaged in hostilities is a hostile combatant whether or not they've ever fired a shot, that's uncontentious! A politician or a political group that's directly responsible is also a legitimate target, whether they're combatants or not, because that's causal."

Gaunia: "Convenient when assassinating public servants. Who it should be pointed out are mandated to act in the interests of the state, not to slavishly follow their own private agenda, scruples or whatever. In my experience as a journalist, that failing leads inevitably to treason."

Evet: "I understand you take your constitutional role seriously but ...."

Gaunia: "Public servants should be expected to hold their scruples in abeyance to patriotism, to love of state. In much the same way as an ordinary citizen places responsibility for their personal security in the hands of the state. Perhaps not all officials have the requisite metal, which considering the defining condition of man is inevitable. It's in their nature when they fail it's all grist to the mill. Some won't disappoint however, we have that old saying - the higher, the fewer."

Evet: "Gaunia … perhaps not quite as old, but I prefer the higher the monkey climbs the more he shows his ass."

Gaunia: "Futé, well if that's your concession to the universal that men are full of evil, clumsy half blind and cowardly I'll accept it! Do you think they'd have it any other way if they understood that their subjection creates their freedom? The question's academic, after all it's the only basis we know for an authority that exceeds all others which asks only obedience to tradition, to the status quo."