RICH BLOOD

The cab Rita rode in was a rusted brown skidding tube that belonged to the Interbus authority of a Brutor Tribe Bureau above Frarn VI. There was an overhaul completed in YC113 that resulted in the 20 million ISK upgrade that mopped up all the piss, replaced all the torn cushions, and repaired all the malfunctioning holoprojectors, but somehow Rita was trapped in this shitstain zipping 100 m/h in a firefight for her life.

A ragged strike force of mercenaries was giving her the rundown on what it meant to face the fury of Petok Salvadoré. He was a tall glass of water with a sparkling personality to match. His lackeys had been hounding her residential block to pay him weekly protection fees. It was the type of extortion racket that after a month would go under, accompanied by the death of the illustrious heads of criminal activity. For Rita though, Petok had kept up with his terrorizing for an uninterrupted three months. This was because, of no disappointment to Petok, Rita’s eldest brother, Armand, died in a botched assassination attempt upon the crimelord Salvadoré. It was people like Armand that warded off the greedy bastards, and with him having struck out, Rita needed to step up. She did so not out of a vengeful spirit, but the realization that her residential block was no damned Gullinbursti monotreme, and stole back the wealth.

The firefight was in full swing, and Rita suspected the security dispatch would just then be receiving word of the commotion taking place aboard the cab flying through the RedLine. They were tracing the cab en route to an automatic stop between Surrey’s Oddities an Fulrahm’s Frozen Catch—a piss-poor fish market Rita used to frequent with Armand before he died. It was to be her safe haven, where she would hide an invaluable holopad that she took from one of Petok’s warehouses, however a bit of overzealous expenditure from her rifle risked a clean getaway, placing her into her daring scuffle.

One civilian with a history of aggravated shouting matches raised his head to let the mercenaries have a piece of his mind, and he lost it when it sprayed 4 meters behind him. The militant clown that shot him, with vibrant colors of red and yellow painted patches on his body armor, shot eight more times, punching a wide hole clear through two rows of seats.

Rita needed to think fast. She suspected that at arriving at her stop, the cab would be recklessly destroyed when the posturing of an ornery stand-off between the security force and the mercenaries would reach its peak. Rita had good sense for the incompetence that defended the station and the ruthlessness of the men who ruled it. Her trigger finger urged for a fair fight, and shot a hole through the roof of the vehicle. Another shot split the track which the cab had hung to, as the lot of them came around a corner.

Deceleration was rapid with transport screaming to a crash.

It was the briefest however longest moment of Rita’s life. She had secured herself in traditional Minmatar fashion by ingeniously hooking the back of her bodyplate to an exposed metal rod of the lavatory module, spilling at the head of the transport. Immediately as the magnetic bond at the rear was lost, the craft slammed into the side of the small shaft they traveled, peeling its structure away in great chunks. The cabin walls gone, there was not time at all before half the mercenaries and a pair of passengers were launched through the hole. Shots from Rita’s rifle blasted at another mercenary, and the remaining three hung tightly to the torn cushioned seats. Their red and yellow leader reached into a hole in the fabric, and his grip served best at splitting the seam,where the mesh interior tore freely, and the man himself was freed from chasing Rita. Her gross negligence of safety left the cab coasting to a tolerable drift in the tunnel. She shot the remaining two armed mercenaries and unhooked herself to slide, where she fell roughly out the hanging coffin and onto the tunnel floor.

A day, or so it felt, passed and Rita was in mauled condition, though resolved as ever to cripple Petok Salvadoré, unknowing of how to end his influence by simply killing him. She had arranged contact with a visiting agent to the station, one who Armand used to negotiate with for firearms during his vigilante life.

“You’re kidding me.” She growled. “After all I went through, you’re going to tell me this item is too hot?”

“Damn it Rita, it’s not me, it’s not!” he squealed. “You’ve madly orchestrated an hour long detour for anyone who used to use the RedLine, for God’s sake.” He did not have a hint of Amarr orthodoxy in his past—he just enjoyed the expression, and like most Gallente, borrowed at will from a thousand cultures.

“I did the station a favor, Hugh.”

“There were eleven fatalities Rita!” He yelled in a whisper. “I’m telling you, it’s too hot, I’m not going to take the holopad, I'm not!”

Fierce tears welled up in the woman’s eyes. “You don’t understand how bad we have it here, you can’t even begin to fathom.” She choked. “You can’t.”

Hugh tried to empathize and searched within himself for a memory of being at the bottom. He thought of the capsuleers whom he often hired out to serve his employers. He pictured himself as being smashed between two great thumbs, though became forced above both, standing with a boot on each of them. “Why don’t you just leave?” He pushed. “Leave the station. You don’t have to be here, Rita. I mean there are a million stations to choose from. Why this one?” He continued to plead. “You’re only going to find trouble if you stay. Don’t dig a deeper grave.”

The statement resonated with Rita as she looked out Hugh’s apartment window. Armand had died two months ago, and was ejected off of a Pyre Fleet Services shuttle, into the deepness of space, where when she looked, it became a gash that left a sore spot on her heart.

“I can’t just leave, Hugh. None of us can just leave. Getting a buyer for this holopad is the only way we can have a life here, or anywhere!” An impassioned stream swept over her face and she covered it thinking how stupid she must look.

Hugh imagined one of the thumbs toppling over, and that he lost his balance. “Look, maybe,” he worked to part the young warrior’s arms, and to her, surrendered, “I might be able to work something out. But don’t hold me to it.” He reached into his vest, then passed her a thin plastic slip that had a thick card at the end, which Rita construed to be the base of the object. “If I find someone, I’ll send you the info on how to find them, on that.” He gestured to the object, “Just stay safe.”

Several hours passed and Rita sat curled and hunched over the holopad and the agent’s contact device. She tapped the hard end against the deadly spoils of her firefight, and imagined what information could be in her hands. She saw the ghost of her brother fall back, dead as a stiff plank. From the death, two identical images of Armand rose, and the copies fell back, and from them, more stood to fall again. Rita became enraged with what she saw, dropping the items. She labored to mask her eyes, though madly shivered to witness the thousand somber faces of Armand, lean into a pile of bodies that revived from a hateful cycle.

The card beeped sharply, alerting Rita to hold it up. The thin plastic gave information, in black bold letters that would guide her to a hangar, somewhere she was familiar. “I DID MY BEST” was signed at the bottom of the slip. Squeezing the holopad, she made her way, out of a tucked back service room, to the rendezvous.

The hangar ahead was filled with a low resurging hum that came from a docked Wreathe, and flanking were a pair of armed men with their weapons holstered. She approached them tentatively with her delivery in a belt container. She had nerves, though mustered the courage to tell them, she was there to make the trade. One guard had called to see the holopad and Rita showed it. A shot was fired from the dark of the Wreathe’s loading bay, and Rita was grounded from the wound. The pair of men moved to restrain her, but the two were killed by the warrior’s swift retaliation. She cursed Hugh in her pitched roll to cover that brought her behind a squat stack of storage containers, and she readied her handgun at the ship’s exit. From the hole, a flurry of shots rang out and toppled the stack of containers atop her, and Rita worried and struggled to free herself, at the steps that she heard follow.

She squirmed and wriggled—she panicked at the steady reverberating approach of steps that grew loudest between the surges of the ship’s humming. Rita flopped, stopped, and then readied her handgun that began to trace the invisible movement. Her face was contorted into a grieved snarl, and she shot the walking figure as soon as it rounded into sight. She resumed to freeing herself, and she felt a new and warm pool of blood soak into her clothing.

She came to a hunched stand and moved to where she could see whom she shot, and Rita cursed Hugh once more.

Sprawled, Petok Salvadoré laid as a burgeoning reservoir of blood, ever broadening. The spreading red washed over Rita in a dizzying wave of relief, and the ghosts of Armand piled in her head. A shot rang out from the black of the Wreathe interior that cleaved Rita to the ground. A second shot fired, and the warrior was disarmed of any hope to retaliate.

Flayed on the hangar floor, all was silent for her, and dimming eyes wandered the expanse of the space above. She imagined ahead her was the firmament filled with the twinkling bodies of heroes. The distant and busy lights made the constellations, Derelik and Devoid, as she could faintly remember viewing them—during a time when she looked out windows with Armand. Malignant echoes batted about her head, and sure enough, as he was living, the pristine and unclothed body of Petok Salvadoré came above her.

There was ripping silence and Petok left from the scene, a pair of corpses.

DOLON DENIS

When Dolon was young, he learned of his father’s valor through the touch of medals his mother kept in a case. The container was the keepsake he chose to take to her bedside, at the Federal Defense Union, above Villore VI. Sleek and variant vessels imbued the woman with the breath of life, which she had for many years expelled in the caring devotion to her family and the grieving that followed the death of her husband. Dolon began to speak of him at great length, though spoke of him only as he knew—through the medals shown in the open case.

The death of his mother, and the little he knew of his father, hovered as a black crest he had painted on his helmet when he returned for deployment aboard a Thanatos that was exiting from a jump above Melmaniel IV. It was a system, that for the past hour was the scene of an escalating field of conflict, and the Thanatos had been directed by superiors in the Federation Navy, to journey there as a relief, in the way of fire support. Dolon served, like his father, as a fighter pilot, a product of a generation at war.

He sat poised in the cockpit of his Firbolg and the rumble of interstellar travel ended with a loud crack that ripped through the abundant clamor of the battle. The Gallente carrier was off point when it came out of the jump and the vessel groaned to climb steeply towards the safety of friendly forces. The order was given nevertheless for Dolon and his squadron to engage.

Piling into open space streamed the fighters, like rockets from a missile bay, and their order was given to eliminate approaching drones. The Gallente forces navigated murderous swathes of projectiles that painted the battlefield gray before crashing into their targets as raging starbursts. And in deadly pursuit of the reinforcements came Caldari Dragonflies, delivering ordinance in a vengeful storm.

Dolon considered that such a remarkable array of armaments and human grit was no less similar than the daunting experience that his father earned his medals fighting. He knocked on his helmet as a luck-borne wish of death to his enemies and gallant reflex to himself.

The foe smashing carried on for an hour, and from a weaving facility on the planet surface, fought another group of soldiers hired to turn the battle tide in favor of the Federation. The Caldari were not ignorant of the value that their planetary platform possessed, and there had situated, mighty batteries to assist in thwarting an aerial threat. Strategic targets were chosen and massive payloads of explosives were blasted into space. The Caldari affiliates roared and hooted as the battered victors, and the Thanatos, among the final ships, began to weep orange flames.

A fleet wide order was given to pull out, and Dolon was among the scattered. Bravery was fleeting when facing death and he drove in a desperate line to his hangar. Distress consumed the command and the capsuleers screamed to jump! “Jump! Jump!”

Dolon witnessed torpedoes exit from a parade of Caldari Phoenixes, and judged to pass the Thanatos to reach the planet atmosphere. Static filled his ears and the glow of his instruments faded as he fell in the care of planet’s pull. The pilot was not alone in his descent and travelled with fragments of the Thanatos beside him.

To this point in his career, Dolon experienced limited exposure to atmospheric flight, and without guidance from the carrier’s systems, he was plummeting blindly. The shell around him moaned at the unusual temperatures and forces that acted on it, and Dolon trusted that he might survive his tribulation a valorous man, albeit, dead.

The planet ocean spat in violent swirls as Dolon came to view it beneath the cloud cover. He braced himself for the impact, closing his eyes firmly. In an erratic chopping crash and spin, the craft smacked the waters several times before agreeing to stop, and the motions made the pilot unconscious. Silent in the storm, was Dolon, a drifting flotsam of the war, and beeping steadily in his care, was the Firbolg transponder.

Dolon dreamt that washing over him was a shower of platinum and gold, traced by the colorful stripes of ribbons. The medals decorated the blackness of the shroud surrounding him, and he rejoiced in the honors with a dumb smile. He began to pin each accolade he could snatch onto his vest, till it showed no more room. Little time passed before his smile began to fade into that of twisted panic when he felt himself sinking from the weight of his awards. For all he tried, he could not rip away, unpin, or in any fashion, remove an honor. The spiral hastened downward, and he heard the stories he told of his father, all beginning in rapid sequence. He struggled for silence and drummed his ears in nervous shaking—though to no avail did the stories stop. His voice became louder, and tempted to tear away his own head, Dolon began to pull with great force, though instead, he stripped himself of his helmet and awoke.

“You are not dead Mr. Denis” spoke a sweetly sounding voice. Dolon had been opening and closing his eyes before he knew he was awake, and his doctor, expecting him, had just noticed. He was a wrinkled man who was aged to the point that when he should want to retire from life, it would let him.

“In a scale from one to ten, Mr. Denis, are you in any pain? One, no pain at all, ten, the most you’ve ever felt.”

Dolon groaned and the doctor accepted the answer by pressing buttons on a chic terminal, calibrating it for the patient, and Dolon relapsed in his waking struggle with the infusion of painkillers. “No, not dead yet Mr. Denis,” the doctor said, rounding the warmly made bed.

Dolon had taken to letting a cheek anchor his face to his pillow, and the doctor stood in sight of Dolon with a datapad in hand. The doctor had been considering the documents shown in a bright light from his device, and he continued to scroll through them.

“We’ve looked very hard Mr. Denis, for any next of kin you might have. Do you have any family Mr. Denis?” Dolon found it hard to answer and he did not speak or attempt to shake his head.

“I see,” said the doctor, “we will begin with some tests.” A series of questions were asked to examine how stable the victim was in mind and body, and he passed for a healthy man. Dolon wanted to be silent for the rest of the day, and at a time, he considered for the rest of his life, though he became angry at how pathetic he saw himself and answered the final question, of the final test of the series, without a nod, but a “yes.”

“Would you say you are fit for continued service Mr. Denis?”

“Yes” he said and he recognized the softness of his answer, and then cleared his throat, “Yes, yes I am.”

The ancient face of the doctor lit up, and he changed the mode of his datapad and readied a stylus to be handed to Dolon. “I am glad to inform you, you are a remarkable candidate for our capsuleers program. You know what a capsuleer is, Mr. Denis?”

“Yes.”

“The Federation Navy has chosen to sponsor you for your health, that is in its prime, and for of course, the incredible acts of valor that you showed above Melmaniel IV.”

The doctor set beside Dolon Denis, the stylus and datapad, and on the device, an area for his signature. The man moved to the doorway to make his final piece. “Think it over Dolon.” He smiled with a slow and confident nod, “For this opportunity, many of us would die.”

TURNCOAT

            —Call me a traitor if you dare, though to ennoble the people, you must commit to one side or another, and I could not choose to side with the Sanmatar. Call me a big rock if you dare, but my people are not little! They are large boulders, same as me, and we are the foundation, upon which a restored Republic will exist. We are born of the new Defiant. We see clear. We have resolve. We are enduring and we are steady. We honor Ta Ka, she who guided us to stand firm, thickened our skin, revived our morale and dispelled the fog that had made us as blind as the face of Maleatu Shakor—

Suno had been parsing through his mail for new jobs to take when Turncoat caught his eye. He was familiar to what he could earn executing a traitor, for he had just plugged in his return route from Khabi, having collected the bounty on a runaway corporation thief. He figured Turncoat was no different a title than Kill this Bitch!, Everything Stolen!, and his favorite, Get it done, I’ll pay ANYTHING!

It puzzled him, as to why there was no complaint, no promise for money, no contact information to follow the message. He considered it might be something of spam that reached the inbox of anyone passing through Ammatar space. It was a call to arms, he thought, and he was unable to make much more sense of the message. He began to wonder if he should pursue a political rebel, and glinting at the front of his mind, he began to wonder if the four empires could wrap better gift packages than the independent corporations.

His intrigue seemed to compound upon itself, and as his Maelstrom came to exit its jump, he cleared his decision with the rest of his crew, that he would make way to Matar. He jeered in a confident cadence over the intercom, that the men will enjoy loose women with tight tents, and that they should be ready to have a good time on the Minmatar homeworld.

The crewmen, mostly men, were bolstered by the comment, though a Brutor widow from Matar took offense, and her comrades teased and prodded her with their elbows.

When the hooting calmed, Suno called out over the intercom, and addressed the widow, saying that she would be coming ashore with him. He gave the entire crew no insight to why. The men around her looked upon the woman with a somber expression, as though they seemed to realize what her story was for leaving the planet surface. The widow felt she deserved an explanation from Suno, and she made her way to the bridge of the Maelstrom.

She stopped in front of a doorway covered by large rust colored panels. Beside it, she manipulated a bright display feature.

“Suno, we have to talk.” The widow said. There was no answer from the room beyond, and the device she spoke into did not return any reply. She let a few seconds pass. “Suno!—” The woman was prepared to yell a long string of curses into the holodisplay when the piercing sound of the doorway opening, startled her. “Damn it, Suno.”

The man stood with a robe wrapped around him, and he patted away a dripping oil substance which began to pool where he stood. Behind him, the walkway was flanked by drains that lead to circular platform, where protruding out of the floor, like a steep green mound, was an upturned and opened end of a capsuleer’s pod.

“What do you want Mina?” He said as he rotated and launched the rag onto a sofa situated against a wall of the chamber. On the back of the man’s neck was a jagged metal ring the size of a closed fist, which at the time, similarly pounded in the very spot, and made him weak and seek comfort at the shelves of the bar across the way.

Mina stepped into the room, and with her back turned, the doorway slid shut behind her. “I want to know why we’re going to Matar.”

“We’re going, because I need an interpreter, and I am not stopping to pick up any malfunctioning-implant-piece-of-crap translation module. Besides, I like to hear your voice, Mina. Don’t you like I like your voice?”

“Don’t change the topic Suno, and I didn’t mean us.” She gestured between herself and the capsuleer who was then serving himself a mixed drink that began to visibly thicken as he poured into it, the final stream of several beverages. “I am talking about why we’re going to Matar, at all. Pator even. There’s nothing there but a Quafe factory and heartburn. The system even boasts one of CONCORD’s fastest response times.” She had recently read an article from a Galletian holobooklet detailing the fastest fleets in New Eden, and felt her newly learned information could dissuade Suno from reviving old memories.

“Heartburn for you, maybe, but I am sure most of the crew would enjoy a relaxing tour of the Quafe factory.” He raised his glass, and began to interface with a nearby holoprojector.

His shoulder came perpendicular to Mina, and the fact he could not face her in the eye, and speak, enraged her. “I don’t want to go.”

Suno tapped at keys that lit up when pressed, and he manipulated the layouts of information that appeared. “No.” He said in response to Mina.

“No? I think you’re mistaken. I don’t want to go. You can’t make me.”

“No.” He said once more as he raised his glass to drink again.

Mina scowled and roughly grabbed, Suno, rotating him and sloshing the drink over the edges of the glass. Coagulated parts of the capsuleer’s drink spilled onto his robe. “Look!” He shouted and frightened her.

She, at many times, had seen how callous the man could be when dealing mercilessly with the victims he collected bounties on—often other capsuleers. Some had never truly done a criminal act in their life, but had instead the misfortune of upsetting a wealthy CEO, who put on their lives, many-million ISK bounties.

“I’m sorry shit got kicked up when you were on Matar. I feel for you, I do, but it’s not my problem. Make peace with your past, and move on.” His hands had achieved a firm grip of her shoulders, and the glass he drank from, shattered when it was released to crash onto the floor. “We all have to move on, and take the days we lived, the things we’ve experienced, as the lessons they are. Just move on. Move on, and live your waking days.”

Suno finished wide-eyed and stern, though his usual cadence cracked, and his final statement seemed to be tinged with a valence of something in him, unresolved. Mina heard, and she was uncomfortable in his grip, and her scowl moved from shock, to a face of deep-seated anger. “Let go of me!” She shook free of his hold, even though Suno could have easily made her struggle.

“I’m not going.” She finished and raged out of the room.

Suno hunched, covered in a mess of oil he missed, which dried in flakes to his skin, and on his robe, spots from the drink he spilled. He watched the widow storm away.

He huffed, grabbing a rag from the bar shelf behind him.

The Maelstrom’s route was calibrated seconds after coming out of the Onga Stargate, directed towards the fourth planet of Pator. Suno readied his men for what they would experience when going to the planet. No one could pick up the change in his voice but Mina, and she kept to the small berth allotted to her. She was restrained by her seething dislike for her captain, and behaved as though it killed her to be above the planet where she had lost her husband. Suno directed who would be going with him to the surface, and commanded that those not going, to ready the dropship that he and a pair of Minmatar crewmen would take ashore. He made no mention of Mina, and he did not allow the rest of his crew to visit the surface with him, until his own business was done. So the men took to resting in their bunks and being mirthful.

Suno flew the dropship out of the cargo bay where it was kept, and his ship travelled down, and swung around the planet. From the torpid heat of the noonday star, to the cool escape of midnight, the dropship rocketed to the brightest point in the river of lights, which snaked in a smooth outline of the great sea of Matar.

Suno knew that he must get some answers. He first wanted to see if the rebel Ta Ka was of any worth to anyone, and second, to see if the sum he would be paid would be great. He judged that he would need to speak to an advanced agent of the Republic Security Services, and during his travel from Ammatar space, he had sent a message to an agent who agreed she could speak with him. The agent, who was holed alone in her office, was staying after her working hours. She had put into the system of her employer’s log, why she would leave her desk later than usual, sending a message titled, Meeting with a Capsuleer: Ta Ka Incident.

Few ships seemed to be in flight above the city, and one of Suno’s crewmen pointed to a location he suggested landing at, and followed by letting his captain know that the office of the Republic Security Services would not be far. The landing zone was the broad top of a squat docking structure, which was positioned at an outlying part of the city-scape's bright interior.

 “Not even two blocks from here.” Said the knowledgeable guide in a voice that was accented heavily by the Amarrish he could not speak around Suno.

The men rounded a corner.

“Up ahead, up ahead here.” The guide said as they pierced through an alleyway, and spotted, in the shadow of an office building, the smaller shape of their destination. It was a clear architectural after-thought. The building was made in the imitation of the larger one, but out of visibly cheaper resources. Antennas even poked up to the sky from a similarly placed module on the roof, as though money was saved by not creating a unique appearance to the structure. Distanced around the large building were varied spotlights illuminating it, and they served to better show its smaller cousin than the short building’s own lights. On the front of the tiny thing was a simple display that read, OFFICE OF R.S.S.

When the visitors approached, an uninviting air fell over Suno’s crewmen. Suno asked what was wrong, and the men explained it away with a superstition about dark places. He allowed them to stay outside as he entered by himself.

The doorway was unsealed, and the hallway of the entrance was not lit. The entire floor seemed to have no light except for the wall of it, which escaped laterally from an open room at the back of the corridor. The pilot took this as where he would be meeting with his agent and made his way forward.

He was more than halfway to the room, when he heard from it, a snuffed rip and the collapse of a body. Suno dove to cover and knelt in observation of the room. He saw, breaking the path of the light source, two distinct figures, and heard from the area, indecipherable chatter. He wanted to alert his own men, though could not, for fear that his position would be given away, and took instead to maneuvering to better hear.

“…She thought I was the capsuleer.” A voice said, and the other body in the room did not respond, as it seemed ultimately, that the answer was not to the other figure, but to another individual on the other end of a communication device.

The speaker choked and stammered, “N-no.” It was the voice of a man, and he cleared his throat. “The capsuleer wasn’t here ma’am.”

The speaker paused, and then changed his tone, as though he was not addressing a superior, and Suno discerned that the man was addressing his partner. “Is their dropship still at the garage?” He asked.

“It is.” A similarly gruff voice responded after a short pause.

“It is, ma’am” repeated the other into his device, and then cleared his throat after a moment of silence.

Suno cursed under his breath and looked towards where he entered, with a sinking concern in his gut for his men outside.

“Is The Draugr still anchored in orbit?” Suno recognized the name of his ship. He fumed to hear it, and was furious at whomever he could imagine was on the other end of the grunt’s call.

The partner, after a moment of pause, worked in an answer “Yes it is…I mean—”

“The Draugr is still in orbit, ma’am.” The voice repeated promptly. There was pause. Suno nearly fell forward in an attempt to hear what would come next. “—It is?” The man questioned. There was an insuck of surprise. “I apologize.”

Then time seemed to collapse on itself…

“Yes.”

He said…

Then spoke, “We will detain him immediately.” And time seemed to speed up all too quickly.

The pilot dashed for the exit, and he could hear from behind him, a charging pair of footsteps. What shit, he thought, as he toppled decorative items into the walkway to create obstacles for those chasing. For one body, he could hear its rough crash into the ground. He made it meters clear out of the building and saw no sign of his accompanying crewmen. He turned into an opposite direction of where he landed, for distrust that his dropship could be safe, and he heard from behind him, the shout of the familiar voice, “Ta Ka wants him alive!”

Suno perspired, and he was unfamiliar with running great lengths. He felt the danger of predators surrounding him, and at the intersection of the next street, he paused.

The streets all were empty, except for ahead, where a scantily clad and abundantly tattooed woman, made with Suno, direct contact of the eyes. Her face was in utter shock, and her limbs played the air as surprised. Suno flinched and choked on what he saw before him, and the dancer mirrored his face and weaved the expression in the air. Maddening! Suno thought, and probably showed it in his face, for in that very twist of his mind, the woman brought the seed to the surface in a flurry of movements.

Mad!

The guilt he felt through Mina.

Mad!

The waking life he lived.

Mad!

The troubles that he suffered, the horrible things he did.

Mad! Mad!

Suno was struck unconscious, either by his own panic, or from the wound the handle of a firearm made, to the back of his skull.

He woke, shackled. His feet were restrained by a heavy chain that connected to a hole in the floor. Suno’s arms were bound behind his back. His wrists could have met, were it not for bracer-like cuffs. And he imagined what he could do with his extremities—he desired so strongly to strangle the neck of the heavily robed woman in front of him.

“You came looking for me,” said the deep and resonating voice of the rebel, Ta Ka. Her notes hung in the air, and Suno could not discern if what he heard was the power in her presence, or the echo of the cold chamber.

The captor accepted Suno’s silence as his reluctance to answer. She knew that he hated her, or even more, in that moment, that she would give him a reason to hate her.

“You came to Matar, not to aid me, but to thwart me. Why is that, Suno Ito?”

By the glare on Suno’s face, she knew that he had underestimated the size of the catch that Ta Ka was. “You don’t know shit, just ‘cause you think you know the surname no one uses, don’t mean piss. Does that get you off, huh?! Using names no one goes by?” Suno chinked the chains in speaking, and the woman turned her back to him and initiated the small display of a holoterminal.

Suno attempted to gainfully understand his surroundings, by reassessing the room, no longer blurred from his waking moments. His eyes adjusted to the darkness, and the floor panels were that of a yellow-metal alloy. He was on an elevated space, a circular platform, and the only doorway was no more than three meters from him. His head rounded the room, and as it did, he was deducing that he must be in the solitary confinement of a slave-holding ship, until, when he viewed the wall, that with the push of a button from Ta Ka, it opened, and revealed a bay window.

“Perhaps you can glimpse what gives me pleasure.” She sung slowly to the man.

Suno saw clearly, in the light of Pator, the mangled carcass of The Draugr.

“It is from enlightening those worthy of being enlightened. This, Suno Ito, this gives me pleasure”

“You blew up my ship! You whack-job! Untie me!”

“Take another look, Suno Ito. Take another look and you will see.” She seemed to have stolen Suno’s former cadence, repurposed it, and made it powerful.

It dawned on him as she said it, “Mina. Mina is, as with the rest of your crew, perished. She is scattered ash that drifts in space, but you, Suno, you can never be ash. You can never die, and though you have progressed to see life as a man free of mortal coils, you still sympathize with loss, and though you have resisted connection with the slaughtered, you pine for them, as you now do with Mina.”

Suno raged with the rage of his former friend, and attempted to aggress, and worked his hardest to harm his captor, but he could not reach her for he was a fettered man. “Untie me, you damned nut!”

Ta Ka left the terminal and she faced out of the translucent portion of her ship’s hull. “Untie me, damn it and I’ll show you death!”

Her back was turned to Suno when she began to lift away the weighted top layer of her clothing. The robe fell heavily to the floor and bunched around her ankles. Suno caught the shimmer of a metal piece that showed as an angry ring at the middle of her neck.

In a deep voice, she hummed, as one would to start a chant, and spoke in thundering foreign words.

Ta Ka repeated in cruel reverence, so that Suno could know what was spoken, “The message is for the living, and we are immortal.”

Suno did not calm in his struggle. He fought to free himself and to damage her, but unknowing of how.

“The time of the empires are coming to an end. Maleatus Shokor is unfit to rule, and in short time, others like me will rise to the occasion, all of us being the largest of boulders, united in the toppling of the weakest mountains, those which are mockeries to our nobility. You may call this for what it is, Suno Ito. This is insurrection.” 

She had finished her statement, and Suno had become winded in his attempt to escape. The woman opened the cell door and a painful beam of light entered the room. Ta Ka exited alone, with Suno Ito chained, curled and sobbing.

THE SECOND GHEINOK

            "God, Jamyl, the Amarr, glory to them." the portly laborer thought, and thought. He thought the statement over several times before, in a quiver, pinched the bridge of his nose! He shot a curse out his mouth in an exasperated jet of air, "damn." He collected himself, and clearing his throat looked towards a viewing port installed meters away from a broad and translucent floating panel that watched up at his chest from an angle. It, in a faded blue hue, illuminated onto his face, lines of schematics. It was the rotated glow of a border gate that gleamed and stuck to one side of his head, no more warped than the traditional crescents shown in most crafts of Amarr design. Beside the schematic, on a portion of the holoprojector, which did not show on the laborer's face, was the complete status of five innocent looking drones not fit for combat. Running from top to bottom along the display feature, was a bar to scroll through a list of the workers, each marked on a status indicator as "busy." Their activities caused blasts of light to enter the room from the view port in the shape of incredible spires. The drones fused hulking segments to the border gate, segments that formerly floated just a kilometer away from the man's location. Everything was functioning as expected, and the system readings were nominal, and from them, the laborer suffered no discomfort. Each of the hundred simple workers moved as designed. Obedient, they would hurry in silent pursuit to their next mission. The assemblage at this portion of the border gate was busy work—an incredible undertaking that went against God, Jamyl, and the Amarr, or so the laborer resumed to debate with himself.

The entire construct ran at a capacity near completion. Freighters for a month had been surreptitiously importing the immense components and modules—parts he had at one point in his life put together in the interest of the Empire’s protection.  And although he had given up his comfortable and recent career at a Viziam factory in stationary orbit above Uhodoh IX, he remained much in the way of his old work. He scrolled through the drones that were under his command to ensure none were slacking. The complex algorithms, made by much smarter individuals, would sometimes encounter a hiccup, and he would need to be on site to make them work continuously. These were the challenges of a lowly foreman that worked out on the edge of Providence, and he would groan, and he would pain himself in thinking, what the hell he was doing there, in the active construction of a sling-shot-to-the-stars, undoubtedly purposed in the dissipation of the Empire's power.

His employer was the CEO of a multi-trillion ISK company who often compared himself to the prophet Dano Gheinok. The way this man had with words was the reason that the foreman felt he had a calling for this position in the furthest reaches of New Eden. Inspiring speeches that closely adhered to the Scriptures gave the entire staff and their families the assurance that what they were doing was of the greatest and of the most holy purpose. Immense salaries confirmed the purpose enough for most, though not for the foreman. His worry was of the very wrath of God, and that to shirk his duties, he would just as well hit the ground a dead man. And despite his reservations as being a traitorous man, he stuck with the fold of the prophet’s renegade company, for he had witnessed the parallels that his spiritual leader would guide his people on a great exodus.

The foreman did not often test being disloyal to his duties, for he feared the anger that he might face as punishment. However, since the thought that he ought to return as a loyal member of the Amarr Empire, he would sometimes feel compelled to exit his workspace to seek some peace of mind. He did not go far most days, only so much so as to pace around the terminal where he worked. He took longer strides each day, until finally, was compelled to leave his workspace entirely, for fifteen minutes, so that the drones he directed would suffer little from being ill-supervised.

He left his station. The arcs of light seemed to search for him, though in their displeasure, went out.

Stuffing his hands in his pockets, he could hide his nervous thoughts. Sweat soaked onto his thighs, and his coworkers, that occupied the break room, would only notice him in passing as he shuffled furtively through the corridor. There was nothing in this passage that could be construed as part of his duties. It was one of the first modules completed, and two of three branching hallways lead to no location where he would be authorized to enter. Red-hued signs hung from the ceiling at a junction he was coming to, and he decided he did not want to turn, but instead, would take a straight shot from his terminal to the end of the corridor, reasoning that he would be able to return quickest to work, from his unauthorized departure. Thick tubes, pipes, wires and intermittent lights preceded his steps to a cold hatch that was kept horizontal and shut along the smoothed yellow-metal floor plates. He turned about to see if anyone was watching, having now reached his destination.

Kneeling, the man negotiated the stick of his pockets, where when pulling out his hands, turned the pockets inside out. He could finally gain hold of the hatch’s cold metal ring. He heaved and turned around the manual locking mechanism, and with a slight creak, the hatch opened.

He saw the influence of his artistry as he crept down the ladder for several steps. It was a narrow chamber, only a meter wide with stairwells intermittently ascending and descending. There were platforms that jutted into the cold exposure of the chamber, areas intended for the maintenance of the behemoth he occupied. When at the floor of the space below, he began to wander. His presence was greeted with boosting howls that when tired of screaming, would fall and morph into a distant thrumming. The foreman made his way to the nearest platform and leaned onto what minimal railing there was, and he admired his work. He became soothed to witness that the polished beauty that could be found on the face of all Amarrian crafts, was turned inside out, to be hardly recognizable within the actual innards of the monument to a new age.

He thought someone must have been running operational tests, for he began to hear rumbling and felt the shrill pull of air.

Sharply and suddenly, the rapid whooping call of an alarm sounded for all men to return to their station. The foreman uncrossed his arms, and in an imbalanced stupor darted to the bottom rung of the ladder he had come down, to hurry back up. The structure shook and loose valves rattled against each other.

In passing above the threshold, there were angry and wild fires that swirled out of, and sparks that leapt from, what he could distantly be made out to be, his former break room. An explosion sounded, and then came a second that erupted, where at the blast, he felt a deafening rush of air sweep past him! His grip, that still firmly wrapped around the ladder, secured him, and he tried to lower himself to safety and struggled to shut the hatch. It became clear to him, the rapid decrease in pressure from the module above him would not allow the hatch to easily shut. He stretched himself to grab the wheel above, and he pulled, using his legs for leverage. The foreman ached, and muscles began to tear, though, a final spur from his will to live, supplied him with the strength to secure what thin atmosphere was left.

He fell backward, awkwardly and was entangled at the base of the squat ladder. He lurched in an attempt to stand, and he knew he would fall, so braced himself.  He grabbed firmly to the railing, and worked his way to a platform below him, where he knew he could access an emergency locker. The foreman punched onto an illuminated keypad, a panic code, which alerted to the emergency systems his location. A clear paned door unlatched and offered the man an airtight suit, which he dressed himself in, and his broad ears began to finally gauge the noises of the chamber. The alarm had stopped, and outside he could hear crashing and thudding against the hull of the border gate.

He knew he would be reprimanded if he was found to be here and alive, and the thought of being dead altogether, so that not needing to explain himself could be an option. The foreman hung onto the railing and began to wait for help. Lights flickered and soon power from the module was drained completely. The only light shining was the light that was produced from within his helmet, and he wondered how he could phrase his escape—a miraculous act of God that spared him from harm, in such way, that his superiors could believe, and not deliver upon his own head, the wrath of the wild noises he heard outside.

He rubbed his hands in prayer and his eyes shifted to the walls.

The immediate dangers to the foreman’s life subsided, and outside the construction zone, 100 kilometers out, and interspersed all between, was the vast wreckage of a thousand ships. The final crushing shots were being made, on behalf of the defenders, and scattered at the furthest end, lined the wrecks of Revelation class dreadnoughts  The hulking ships were split into wicked metal fragments that drifted in errant directions, and denoted on their hulls, were large striking symbols of fealty to the Empire. The remnant of the flagship, known to have the ticker "Passion" stamped across its bow, was pierced with jagged chambers, dark and weaving, fit enough for a catacomb on Amarr Prime. The husk of the ship would be the closest thing to a burial that the Amarr loyalists would receive before being exhumed by a fleet of scavengers.

Their renegade leader issued a recovery protocol, and in the same breath, cursed the loyalists, which his forces had slaughtered, as worthless. He praised the efforts towards the victory, congratulating his armada’s actions as being their finest display of violent might. His voice surged across the intercom speakers in all the ships and stations of the system. He assured them of the wealth that would become theirs with the imminent completion of the border gate.

The foreman was inspired and he was sick to be in the gut of the installation. He knew how he would fashion the story of his survival.