I wrote this a few years ago in response to happenings in the game I was playing at the time, EVE Online. After having re-written it several times being unable to settle on an ending I like, I chose to consolidate it all into two short scenes. The image is a signature I put together for the forums during the years I played.
Warm rivulets of water skate over the soft swells of her body, her hair a slick rope of saffron snaking down her back contrasted by skin white enough to be translucent in shallow places. Her forehead rests blissfully against the faux mosaic of the last shower she would enjoy for many months. Water tickles over her breasts, her thighs, and along the myriad sockets and neural catheters composing the capsule uplink along the curves of her spine. There are ten trillion people in New Eden, scattered across thousands of worlds large and small, urban and agricultural, free and enslaved. Of those ten trillion only a few hundred thousand call themselves Pilots, Capsuleers, human computers with the mental acuity to interface with ships large and small.
To the nations of New Eden a Pilot represents a force multiplier worth a many times their weight in platinum. From tiny frigates to super-dreadnoughts and moon-sized titans, one Pilot can reduce the crew compliment of the largest ships to only a few hundred, most to just one. Instead of thousands of souls to crew a battleship requiring training and payment, just a handful can manage what the AI and Pilot cannot. To the souls of New Eden she is a Goddess, a bringer of wealth and destitution, life and death, destruction and resurrection at the command of her thoughts.
It was never easy, making the transition from real time to capsule time. The thought of being inside that tiny pod for thirteen months makes her stomach turn with nausea. Early in her career she learned to fast before launch, and bracing against the cold tile dry heaves until she stumbles to her knees.
“Shiaari,” the Brutor’s baritone rumbles through an open door. “What’s wrong?” His tall broad frame darkens the frosty opaqueness of the shower door before easing it open.
“Mordred,” her whisper laced between waves of tumbling water. “We all deserve to die, all of us.”
“To the last child,” he says, returning her whisper as he stoops to gather up the woman as though her limbs were broken glass.
“Will you kill me, also?”
“You? Not yet, not until my people are free, the Empire thrown down,” he pauses, “and never so long as I love you, my impossibly beautiful slaver princess.”
Everything about them was an exercise in contrasts. Mordred, dark as his own shadow, carrying this pale Amarri woman of royal birth. The frail capsule prone pilot stumbles as he returns her to her feet. Her knees wobble, red against her porcelain flesh.
“How can you love me? I am everything you hate.”
“Because you accept my hatred and permit my affection.”
And so it was Shiaari’s people the Amarr, the first descendants of the Eve Gate colonists to rediscover space travel, enslaved the Minmatar. Ruined countless worlds and perpetrated a genocide so complete there is no memory of the ancient Matari people. What is left is what they have become as the slaves of Amarri nobles. While the modern Amarr Empire has cooled its zealous campaign of interstellar conquest, the Reclaiming as they call it, having reached out to the other nations of New Eden the Empire remains the preeminent galactic super power, and the free peoples of the Minmatar Republic wage a guerrilla war against their former masters who still claim an easy seventy five percent of the Matari population as slaves.
To the Caldari, the Amarr represent an opportunity for growth for the State’s member corporations, who happily pretend the Amarri slave problem does not exist. But for the Gallente, that Federation a bulwark of freedom and liberalism, the Amarr represent a clear and present danger to all freedom loving people of New Eden, and they have thrown their considerable economic power behind the fledgling Minmatar Republic, secretly delivered to them the weapons and infrastructure needed to wage a war against the largest fleet in the galaxy: The Royal Imperial Navy.
Not long ago a squadron of Imperial ships appeared over the horizon of Caldari Prime, a threat to the Federation Fleet occupying the Caldari homeworld. Their signature golden hued tungsten armored hulls caught the light of the local sun, turning night into day for billions of occupied Caldari and Gallente citizens. The size and ferocity of the Imperial attack led the Federation to believe it was a full scale fleet action, until an armada larger still penetrated deep into Gallente space and made the galaxy take notice. The exact size of the Imperial Navy remains a strict state secret. Perhaps, the Amarr have as many ships as they do slaves, the extent of their naval might a lasting fail safe against Gallente/Caldari aggression.
He takes the time to towel her dry and brush her hair. He tends to her uplink array and spends a few extra moments with her sensitive spots. While his back still bears the scars of his former station he is always surprised to find them on this most unlikely of victims: This royal born Pilot of Athran pedigree, snatched in her prime, fleeing a conspiracy and seeking redemption for a past stolen from her memory. He had seen himself in her realizing the truth a slave is bred to forget, that every man, woman, and child of New Eden are equal before the lash. Anyone can be broken, even Amarri royalty.
“I am ready.” She nods sullenly as a real doctor–in this case a surgeon–enters and awaits to assess her readiness and begin the process of entombing her in the tungsten sarcophagus that will be her home for the next year or so.
“Let’s begin with your name.”
“Shiaari Kador, eldest daughter of the Royal House of Kador, born Shiaari Eshamn, former vassal, adopted daughter, and stated successor of his Eminence Uriam Kador.”
“And Juliet asked what’s in a name.” The Sebiestor neurosurgeon laments passively, telling her to save the honorifics for people who care. “And where are you?”
“Republic naval outpost Q6-R3R. Position classified. As of your question local time was 2300 hours, 16 minutes, 48 seconds. You should notify station maintenance of an impending coronal mass ejection from the local sun in 12 minutes and 32 seconds. All systems nominal, though a fusion reactor on deck 60 is hinting at fuel contamination. Recommendation: Alert–”
“That’s… quite enough from you.” He cuts her off, glancing over at her brooding Brutor lover. “She’s ready.”
The surgeon invites her to a wheel chair before donning a respirator, gloves, and other protective equipment and covering her with a surgical drape. He hums to himself as he saturates the neural catheters along her spine with strong smelling antiseptic, staining her almost translucent skin. Artificial synaptic transmitters are carefully inserted into each catheter. She never grew accustomed to the discomfort and she twitches here and there to the tune of his sympathetic apologies. These are then coiled and taped into a single conduit and meshed into a modular relay that will connect to the capsule sling.
Her next stop is the capsule itself, escorted through the station corridors by a substantial security detail. The men pretend not to notice the nude pilot as she rises and steps into the protective harness of the capsule’s gravity sling, into which the relay is mounted and the entire assembly–Pilot, sling, and all–is hosed down with an antibacterial wash before she is intubated. Newly trained Pilots request to be sedated during this procedure, but for her the feeling of the flexible tube snaking down her throat had become a reassuring promise she would have air.
“Damn, how the hell does that bitch take a shit?” A Sebiestor technician comments as the capsule is sealed.
“She doesn’t,” the surgeon answers ruefully. “Pilot physiology has been modified so pervasively that under specific conditions they only urinate. All nutrients are introduced and passed as liquid without causing damage to her digestive tract. The capsule’s self-contained life support recirculates the suspension gel, perpetually clearing it of waste.”
Inevitably someone chuckles about the Imperial whore who is literally too good to sit on the toilet, and the technicians wander off to other duties leaving the Brutor to watch his mate hoisted into a transit shuttle. The dim station light catches the golden tungsten sheen of a moored Abbadon class battleship, the 800 meter beam of the vessel held steadfast, long-range tachyon laser turrets bristling from her flanks. He wonders to himself how it could possibly have come to pass that Imperials have come to the aid of the Minmatar Republic.
It spoke of the state of Amarri court politics. The newly ascendant Empress Jamyl Sarum was not fast enough to consolidate power after the late Chamberlain Karsoth’s scandalous association with heretical elements of the Sani Sabik cult. The Amarr Empire, a feudal association of the five Royal Houses, was fracturing. Liberalism was quickly becoming fashionable compared to the old world religious politics of the Reclaiming. Throughout Amarrian history Royal Heirs had periodically declared their sovereignty against the Empire, House Khanid being the first establishing the sovereign Khanid Kingdom, and each time a successor House had been elevated to Royal status by the privy council keeping the number of Royal Heirs at five.
“Perdition’s Lament.” A strong Athran accent speaks. “You go by Mordred?”
The Brutor nods, glancing over at the ethnic Amarri male, his chiseled Athran features twisted into a sympathetic smile. He assumes the Imperial regards him as an idiot; Mordred indeed understood the origins of his name. For the Brutors education isn’t the most important, but for this Matari orphan who calls the Federation home, education is his most closely guarded secret.
“My ship, Perdition’s Lament. Captain Tyre Malkar.”
“I hear you people grow out of the woodwork,” Mordred ignores the outstretched hand.
“Impossible. Trees loath rust.” The veiled insult is punctuated by Malkar’s dull boot thud. The miracle of the Republic Fleet, as haphazard and crude as it seems to outsiders, is in the fact it was assembled virtually over night. To the Minmatar declaring their independence the flying scrap yards assembled piecemeal from whatever they could find could not be more beautiful. Matari cruisers maneuver in ways that defy logic in large part because they do without flying themselves apart, and Matari captains have only one chance to get it right: don’t get hit.
Mordred smiles, “She’s the first Amarrian I’ve met and didn’t strangle. We weren’t ready for all her friends.”
“Where that woman goes, I follow. Not all of us agree with Imperial edict, Mordred. Some of us see a different future for the Empire, perhaps, less Imperial.”
“You’ve flown with her?”
“I’ve bled with her.”
“Against my people, I’m sure.”
Tyre takes a heavy breath of regret. “We all have our sins to atone for, but you play a deadly game with your romance.”
Mordred purses his lips.
Tyre continues. “Shiaari is a Pilot. She represents billions of credits invested in conditioning, cloning, and training. If the Empire can’t have her back they’ll see her dead, and you along with her.”
“You don’t think I’ve dealt with Imperial assassins?”
“Not the kind sent after rogue capsuleers.”
“I think you’ll find my commitment to her safety genuine.” With a wave of his hand Mordred signals an opaque containment field to become transparent. Beyond is utter blackness dwarfing the two men standing on pre-rusted deck plate, held back from the abyss by mere micrometers of charged particles made rigid by the Higgs field generators along the periphery. In those moments Tyre Malkar muses about the darkest of nights, remembering his childhood on Amarr Prime and the North Reach plantation of his youth.
Mordred folds his arms over his broad chest, watching the Amarri casually observing the apparent emptiness. Slowly the sun rises not over the familiar curvature of planetary horizon but over the dazzling brilliance of crystaline chromium armor. The beautiful line of the vessel fills their peripheral vision, the form and function of the ship–whose shadow engulfs the entire station–manifesting as it rolls languorously on its longitudinal axis.
“My God… a Nyx class.” Malkar squares off with Mordred. “You put her in command of a Federation super-carrier!?”
Mordred pretends not to notice, his palm pressed to the shimmering field. “My gift to you my love, Shiaari Kador,” he whispers under the ardent protests of the former Imperial Rear Admiral.
“Do you have any idea what she’ll do with that kind of firepower!?”
“All too well.”
The shuttle carrying her capsule couldn’t appear any larger than a blinking dot to any stationside observer. Specifically set aside for the task of loading a Pilot, a special docking bay is made available on larger capsule capable ships. In these bays there are no elevators or cargo doors, or other points of entry to the ship’s chromium plated maw, just the irised opening accessing the injection duct centered in the deck of the glistening interior. The capsule is unloaded, secured, and ready to be whisked away to the hardened and sealed Holy of Holies that is the computer core where no one else is permitted entry. Anyone smart enough to hitch a ride atop the capsule will only find themselves gasping for air. There is no life support in the core, and between the Pilot and AI any damage caused by a fool in an EVA suit will be bypassed by absurdly redundant subsystems leaving the trapped interloper to suffocate or freeze to death, whichever comes first.
Numerous attempts at sabotage of such capital ships have been attempted. All have failed, as simple high explosives lack the destructive power to inflict any permanent damage to the core’s subsystems. Though, one enterprising and disgruntled Deteis tried sneaking a thermonuclear device in precisely that manner aboard a capsule ready starship. While shielding such a device from detection is easily accomplished in shipping containers, squeezing such a thing into the injection duct along with the capsule makes the device readily detectable to be jettisoned long before reaching the core. For the Deteis there was no chance, being jettisoned along with his timed bomb. The most risk for any Pilot is therefore transport. More than one capsuleer has been assassinated by double-agents acting as doctors, suicide bombers on station gantries, scorned lovers in their own beds, and even infectious bug bites gone unnoticed.
The security detail breathes a much deserved sigh of relief as the pod vanishes into the empty chasm and the iris closes securely.
Shiaari finds herself adrift in the vacuum of space. As her physical analog coalesces into the familiar shape of a human female she looks to her right and observes the station hanging in its high orbit just over the starboard bow. To port, the blinding local star, larger and more unforgiving than her native sun, bathing everything in harsh radiation. With a twitch of the eyes she can see it, a broad spectrum view of solar wind. Funny to call it wind. It reminds her more of water, flowing in torrents of ionized particles, curling around the magnetometric signature of Republic colony world Q6-R3R. It ripples and eddies around the fleet’s shields, enveloping every ship in a cerulean halo.
And there is that familiar itch in the back of her head. The capsule is secured in the core, connected, and the AI is waiting with a deluge of information. Despite her exhaustive training and mental exercise nothing ever prepares her for that first meeting of minds, especially with a ship so large and complex as a super capital ship, much less that super capital being a super-carrier with its vast squadrons of drones and interceptors. One could spend a year alone learning how to manage the many catapults and magnetic arrestor fields used to simply launch and retrieve a fighter wing, much less the overlapping shield and point defense subsystems, propulsion, and the most complex machinery she had ever laid eyes on: A cynosural field emitter, literally, her own personal jumpgate. Gone were the days of warping between gate to gate, no, now a forward scout deploys a beacon anywhere within a thousand light years and she along with her fleet jump independently of CONCORD sanctioned shipping lanes.
And there is the headache, along with a wire frame schematic of her new vessel. It engulfs her completely. Signals from every station on every deck. Data is needed. Crew need orders. The AI insists on immediate protocols. There is no reprieve in this floating prison. It is time to go to work.
Initiating reactor cold-startup.
Much of the demand is inconsequential and her mental discipline takes over, filtering out only the most urgent of requests. In these moments the AI would move to fill in the gaps, learning where to assist the Pilot as data deemed unimportant is rerouted to the core for processing. It is where Pilot and AI fuse into a cohesive unit and the advent of the capsuleer pilot becomes most readily apparent. In the upcoming minutes the small crew finds their role quickly diminishing as the Pilot assumes greater and greater control of the ship. Many will disembark, their presence no longer needed. Subsystems once operated from the bridge suddenly become non-responsive, and even the helmsman chuckles to himself and goes for a cup of coffee as without warning the ship begins to orient itself at the Pilot’s whim.
Reactor output stable. Sublight propulsion online. All engines are go for ignition sequence.
As the orders are given the AI takes over the small tasks, and one by one the four battleship sized fusion torches behind the ship glow, flicker, and erupt in brilliant white exhaust. The drone bays signal green and the next instant two squadrons of interceptors catapult from the bow and spread out in a combat patrol, the first taking up a perimeter orbit, the other launching into warp on a forward fighter sweep.
At this point a million eyes and ears are on her. Even measured against the station itself she is now the largest human built structure in the star system, and as the massive super-carrier lumbers upright the other ships in the fleet follow suit, particularly an Amarri battleship christened Perdition’s Lament clinging protectively to the Nyx’s bow.
“I’m here, Shiaari.”
“You didn’t have to come, Tyre. Your crew should have had the choice.”
“I’m afraid the vote was unanimous, my Lady. If it be God’s will you shall not burn alone.”
“God is no party to this. I intend to live.”