My little Capsuleer

by LeHarfang

Chapter 1

How could I have been so careless.... there I was.... plunging towards a planet I knew nothing about... inside of a green egg. Was it my end finally coming? Me? A demi-god of the skies? How could I die so soon in my career? I still had a lot to learn. Pretty ironic, I thought, since eggs are supposed to be the beginning of a new life... The egg was brutally shaking all around me and in mere seconds, I thought all of this would be over. No clone to save me this time. my conscience would be trapped in this fading body. I could'nt see anything at all since my camera drone probably melted as we descended into the atmopshere and i couldn't launch another one, obviously. I was now blind and descending really fast towards a certain death.

All of a sudden, the little container's scanners started to make noise in my head. My scanners detected a large city like signature really far below.

“What's this? Civilization?! On this deserted planet?!” I told myself, surprised. “Maybe, I can be saved after all!” A shock even stronger then before reminded me the position i was in. “Oh yes! I need to find a way to land!” A split second thought came as i remembered i was in hostile territory, but the signature differed from usual Amarr ships or structures.

At that point, I was desperately searching for a way to make it out of this alive. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. In my mind, i quickly reviewed everything i could do in this little Jovian coffin: even the scanners, which were blinking red and not helpful at all. Then i got an idea about the engines and how i could use them.

“Of course! It's my only chance!”

A few hours earlier...

It was a boring day, in this unknown system my corporations settled in. We didn’t find any signature that day, not even a 'gravimetric' one to mine. Nothing.

I was bored of staying in my ship, that i commanded with my capsule, alone in our corporation star base. I was also fed up of looking at mining lasers in High security space and shuttling between an asteroid belt and a space station. That last word reminded me the station life with my parents i had. When i was younger, the technology behind capsules weren’t discovered yet. I think it was discovered when i was twelve or something. I didn't really had the skills to command a crew of a ship, but it didn't really matter when commanding a capsuleer ship since you dont really talk much with the crew. I just send them orders and they execute, simple as this.

Each time i die, my conscience is immediately transferred into a new body, to be reborn again. Of course, each time, i have to deal with the loss of my ship, which can cost in the hundreds of millions of ISK, the interstellar currency of New Eden. However, when i look back, i think of all the people who did'nt have the same chance as me. Even my parents... its been so long since I’ve seen them. Since i left for the pilot academy. I was really far from them, even farther then i could imagine. I was sitting in a small frigate, there in our corporation controlled wormhole.

When seen from the back, my ship at the time looked like a bent curved 'flat tower' resting on an arm-like wing, on its left side. This particular one was actually a modified version of an exploration ship, the Imicus, its stock 'out of the mill' version. Since it's equipped with a way better computer, it can use cloaking modules that makes cloaking while warping possible. This faster calculating equipment also increases the scanning results of probes.

While looking at my surrounding, only another ship was there and it was an Hurricane, a Minmattar battlecruiser ship piloted by a corp mate named 'Fires Darkness'. He's actually a clone of another guy named 'Duke D89'. No, those are probably not his real names, but we have a tendancy to use nicknames among capsuleers. It's just that we think our normal names wouldn't fit what we have become. Anyway, since the 'minnie' - diminutive of Minnmatar- ship is standing still, I concluded that the guy was resting or something, so he's not really there. I never quite understood how alt-clones works to be honest. How can two consciousnesses be connected to form one even though there's a galaxy between them was beyond me.

Anyway, i was sure there was an explanation, somewhere, I simply had yet to find it. I rotated one of my camera drones I used to see around and looked at the Control Tower, in the center of the star base. On my helmet screen, i could see a modified six kilometers high pirate Minmatar tower which had more power and CPU capabilities then its stock counterpart. I guessed 'Dad', our corporations CEO, got it from some pirate ally or contact he had. Like most 'minnie' designs It looked like it has been stripped from most of his armor, since some of the structure inside was visible. One mustn't think less of these, though, since control towers, even minnmatars, are really tough to destroy. An offline tower, without its shield, can take at least six hours to destroy, without heavy siege ships, like Dreadnoughts.

I looked at my star map, a map of all of Known Space in the new Eden cluster. I've set it up to see the systems sovereignty, to check if there was any unclaimed system. Not that i could claim one by myself, but we can always dream... There was a gray lone dot near a Low Security system at the bottom of the Ammatar region: Assah, that bothered me. It was weird since the system was isolated from other Null Security space. It was also surrounded by Ammattar low security systems.

This made me curious. It looked pretty suspicious since it's vary rare that a null security system like this wouldn't be connected to other 'null sec' systems and found that this system has been open to be claimed by capsuleers for a year now. I thought that strange that no one claimed it yet. Then I thought that the obligation to traverse a 'low sec' system which were unclaimables, since one of the four empires owned it, may have made it less attractive to 'null sec' alliances. It doesn't explain why no 'low sec' capsuleer dwellers claimed it. I was sure they would jump on the occasion. This was enough to make me curious about it and decided to go check it out myself.

I thought that, since I was able to warp unseen in systems, I would be able to travel trough the low sec systems untouched and explore the odd one without any problems. I went and checked my equipment one last time, because i had the feeling it would be a long trip. Of course, i would stayed in contact with my corp mates at all time, but i also knew that in null security, there's no markets where to buy new equipment. So i looked my ship fitting in my head... a modified covert ops module, a scanning probes launchers and probes... i had some speed modules to decrease warp out time. Well, its the best fitting i would ever be able to use. I then fire up the engines towards the wormhole that lead to known space and started the warp drive. The ship computer then took on from there and aligned the ship at exactly the right angle towards the wormhole, which was a few AU 'astronomical units' away from me.

On the other side lied a Gallente owned high sec system. The nebulae I could see from it was of a bright green with clouds of a brownish tint, which seems to be composed of a much more dense stuff than the green ones. Bright spots of light were illuminated in these random shaped zones. This nebulae contrasted a lot the one from the wormhole space I just left, which looked like lots of white and turquoise clouds on a dark blue background. It looked way more lively as well.

Nebulaes were always a beautiful sight. They reminds capsuleers that, even when flying the biggest ship ever, they're still almost nothing compared to the gigantic size of the universe, i thought, ...and it's even more true when flying a frigate sized ship like an Helios. This made me feel so small and useless, in this huge galaxy.

The ship was again decelerating and, soon, I could see the Gallente Star gate. It looked like three rings forming a line, attached to a bulbous base, where the control rooms probably were. The rings each had an inner ring where bright blue lights could be seen circling around. I approached my ship near the back end of the three rings and sent a jump request to the gate. Once he received the authorization to proceed, he directed his ships towards the first rings and passed through it. His ship, then, became enveloped in a pure white blob which propelled him at speed greater than light. In a split second, I reappeared at the receiving end of the destination stargate and could see whitish lines forming behind me. Those were the remnants of the neutralized blob of energy that allowed my travel.

I am used to those kind of light speed traveling. Each system i went through gate, i had to warp to the next systems one. When the destination is something like fourty 'gate jumps' aways, it can take a while to travel through all of them. So, i decided to take this time to rest a bit before the challenges that awaited me, once i had reached 'low sec' and 'null sec' and started the auto-pilot. I decided to set it to the last high security system before the low security area and went to meditate before the actual journey begins.

An alarm rung loudly into my ears as a voice was telling me my ship has reached the destination system i had input into the auto-pilot. Since the auto pilot dropped me at the arriving gate in the system, i had to align and warp again towards the gate that leads to the next system on my route.

Once i saw the gate slowly appeared, I didn’t really thought anything of it, other then it was normal Amarr designed with large structures that looked shielded on one side by a huge and pointy layer of golden-ish armor. All my life, I’ve been told that ammarians were but a bunch of religious bigots, enslaving any race they could conquer, saying that their 'God' told them to. Of course, that's just bullshit, i thought, since i was raised as a liberal Gallente. "There's no god in this universe. Just us, humans, killing each other for egotistic reasons... ", i thought.

"Ah, why being angry at it, now? It's always been like this and i would never be able to change it. Yes, they're religious, but it never stopped me from traveling in here neither." While i was thinking, my ship has been out of warp right there next to the gate to low sec. I guess it must have been the stress of going there in a ship that can get blown in seconds if it is discovered, that fueled my thoughts. It was just a frigate, but these particular versions cost way more then the stock versions, on the market and i didn’t have the money to replace it. I thought then that it wasn’t that bad, actually. I just had to mine a couple of times like i did in the past. I looked at the gate and approached its rear and prepared for the light speed transfer... and sent the request to the star gate. Same thing happened, only this time, the blob wasn’t pure white but gold in appearance. On my arrival, i was still under the cloak that the gate puts on arriving ships. It was a protection against being killed, while still being unconscious from the light blob. I heard many horror stories where pilots and their crews, have been killed by pirate ships camping the gates, while still being under the daze of the travel. Of course, if it happened to me, i wouldn't mind since i would wake up in my clone in a split second, but before the capsule technology existed and clones were bound to it.... it meant all those lives were lost forever. I feel sorry every time i think about it... Losing a life- no, a conscience, an individual, is the worst that can happen, at least, that's what i believed. My mind went to the handful of people in my ship i knew nothing about.

As i was once again lost in thought, i suddenly noticed with horror the cloak was dissipating. I quickly search for the command of my cloak module and turned it on. Luckily, there was'nt anyone nearby so i was fine. I located the next gate on my route and activated the warp, only this time i was more nervous. There could be pirates waiting for me at the gates with a bubble, common word for a warp jamming sphere. If they got me into it and uncloaked me, i was done. Sadly, since there is nothing to do about it, I’ll have to do my best to avoid anything that could uncloak me in this bubble, like jettisoned canister (jet cans). It was a commonly used strategy for pirates to drop some of those around the bubble so that cloaked targets would be uncloaked as soon as they arrived in the bubble near those. That's because if there's an object less then two kilometers away from you, the cloak doesn’t work anymore.

So there i went, from star gates to star gates, again. I did encounter some ships, but no bubbles and nothing to actually kill me. It was almost as if it was too easy, but it happened to me before when traversing low sec systems, so it didn’t bother me. The last gate leading to the dreaded system soon appeared in the black horizon... wait, it was different then normal gates. It looked strange, as if it included design from each of the four empires and embedded into one star gate, with a coat of white paint on it. The bulbous shapes of the gallentes, the straights from the caldaris, the rounded spikes of the amarrrians and the armor stripped from the minnmattars. I approached the thing and placed myself at the back like every other door i took since i left our unknown system and.... I stood still for a moment. It was the first time i ever visited a null sec system that i didn’t know if it was safe or not. If it wasn’t for the fact that i knew I could easily come back to life if I died, I would have never sent the request to jump. However, since it wasn’t the case, my ship, and its crew suddenly took less and less value, compared to the knowledge and thrill I would probably get from that system. I'm certainly not the first capsuleer to have visited that system and i was sure i wouldn’t be the last, but the risk of the unknown called me and I answered.

Well, I kinda expected it a bit. I had hopes that i would be able to warp somewhere right away, but it seems I’ll have to move a little before going anywhere. Strange though, why put a bubble on this side of the gate when cloaked people can easily get out of their reach. I could see the ships standing by, waiting for a victim and had some pity for them, since i thought their commander was incompetent. Little did i know about their strategy and plans. The two waiting ships were two big Abaddons, the strongest amarr battleship. They looked like horned monsters with that spike armor on top of their ship, going right past the front and overshadowing it. On each side of the main body were eight 'slots' that could each be fitted with a battleship sized turret. Those in particular had energy or 'laser' turrets, the specialty of the Amarr empire.

These were pretty good ships actually. Even though i wasn’t too fond of their creator's believes and actions, i still was able to see a fine ship when i saw one... That was strange, the two golden monoliths had no capsuleer signature attached. Usually, each ship has the name of its pilot attached to it.

Wait, are they... navy ships? Here in null security?!, i thought.

I couldn’t believe it! The system hasn't been claimed at all. I could see that something was pretty fishy already and i only just jumped into the system. I knew I still had the choice of either continuing, or leaving by the same star gate i arrived here. It made me hesitate a little, but my decision was already taken and i wanted to explore this system, whatever i was going to find. Plus, those two amarr vessels got me curious about what were they defending. So once, i was out of the sphere, i started to look around the system for somewhere to start my improvised 'espionage'. I then noticed something... weird about the sun of the system. It's as if it was emanating something. Not something that my light sensors (also commonly known as camera and eyes) could pick up but something i felt from my body directly. Anyway, i looked away from the sun onto my scanners and they picked up the signal of only one planet in the system. There seemed to be a moon around it as well. I decided to warp to it and drop one hundred kilometers from the destination. I couldn’t know what i was going to fall in, and from my experience in our unknown system, its best to be safe then having a destroyed ship, and that's even more true in the one i was.

The two battleships were nothing compared to what i saw when i arrived there. A fricken Avatar! An amarr titan ship! It was sided by two super carriers and an immense fleet of sub-capital ships. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Why was an amarr fleet here- no, why did the amarr invaded a system that was clearly intended for capsuleers by Concord? There must be something the Amarr wanted in this system. I looked a bit more and noticed that a station has been built around the planet. It wasn’t as big as a standard station, it was actually an Outpost. It looked like two long spikes that went out of the main part of the structure which was composed of an hangar, of which the exit was between the two huge armored claw. It also had some kind of tower shielded on the outside, on the left side of it. On the other side of the main structure, opposite of the hangar exit, was a main platform for ships to dock in and out of the building.

All the ships were evenly parked around the station like soldiers, side by side. It was a true army. I decided to go check the moon as well since i was thinking that there could be a Star base there i could spy on. I warped towards it, again with the same one-hundred-kilometer precaution and my heart rate tripled: i dropped right in front of two frigates patrolling the area who were close enough to break my oh-so-useful cloak! Without thinking, i spammed the hell out of the button inside my capsuleer helmet, to warp back to the planet. My ship appeared and the two ships noticed me as they moved to engage. They locked me but I was able to escape before any shot were fired. Then, i realized i was already doomed. I forgot to warp at one hundred! Now, i wasn’t even cloaking back. I knew their ships would uncloak me the second i would drop from warp anyway. So yeah, when i arrived, I was right there, between a planet and an army of Amar navy ships. The first thing i saw was an interdictor ship, positioned near me who fire up its bubble around me. I tried to speed up in the general direction of the planet in a futile attempts to free myself from it, but it was too little too late. They didn’t even sent the heavier ships to kill me. The interdictor locked me and fired its lasers which tore my ship apart as my capsule was ejected towards the planet, accelerated by the momentum of my ship.