Resignation

3 years, 3 months, 3 days. That's how long her record sheet said she'd worked for Dragonstar. A funny date, a coincidence.

Kayleigh stared at the datapad, dotted line flashing at the bottom waiting for her to press her thumb there, and she hesitated. She lifted her grey eyes to sweep the room.

Her office was already empty, naked of everything but the very last personal touch: the old Dragonstar Racing Team poster from Season I. She smiled faintly as her gaze lingered there, on the image of herself, Iconath, Loras and Scavanger. It seemed like a lifetime ago. It made her sigh as her smile faded.

In the fast-paced world of capsuleer pilots, three years was a long time. It was depressing to see it all come to an end, when three months back everything had been going so well on the way to a healthy and thriving corp. Now, Dragonstar was a ghost of itself. Most pilots had left to other corporations within Nox Draconum. They were down to Druif, Quintrala, herself and Kiarra, basically. Kayleigh simply didn't have the strength anymore, not after the rug had been pulled from under her in that way. It was time to let go, start anew, change scenery.

And yet she couldn't help feeling she'd somehow let the corporation down, that she should be doing something, anything. With another miserable sigh, she turned her gaze again toward the datapad. That dotted line still there, blink, blink, blink... Grey eyes hard as steel, Kayleigh finally thumbed it. With a quiet bleep her life with Dragonstar came to an end.

She felt that she ought to be crying, but she couldn't shed a tear. She was too tired, too defeated. She simply got up, strode to the poster and retrieved it. At the door she cast one final glance at what had been the Director's office, her home away from home for so long. She lowered her gaze, shook her head and walked out.

In the empty office, the automatic door slowly closed itself.

The End of an Era

3 years, 1 month, 13 days. That's how long her records indicated she'd been a Dragonstar employee.

Three years since she'd graduated (seemed like a lifetime ago.) Three years since she'd joined a private corporation (seemed only yesterday.) Three years of racing under Dragonstar banner. Three years of camaraderie, joy, hardships endured together with amazing people she'd come to love and cherish. In one single night it was all now falling apart.

She'd come back from a stint in uncharted space to find that Kiarra, Dragonstar's founder and original CEO from those same three years back, had seized the leadership of the corporation. Now, Kayleigh was under no illusion that she was a good CEO; she'd only taken the job in a desperate attempt to keep the corporation from dying just the past winter.

And actually she'd have been more than glad to hand over the reins, especially now that so many questions had risen among the corp which she was struggling to keep up with and answer to everyone's satisfaction. She would have loved to hand it over to someone more experienced.

But to come home and find it done in her absence, after three years of unwavering loyalty and hard work? That hurt. Deeply. And it had also outraged not only the majority of Dragonstar pilots, but also their sister-corp, Endless Night.

Her director, Kanunu, had panicked and raged, she'd been told. He'd locked down everything and secured every cent and every asset somewhere. She was going to have to go over everything with him, give back what belonged to Dragonstar, split EndLand proceedings among people who worked there, return donations to rightful angry owners. It was a dirty and painstaking job. She was going to be at it for days.

Then of course she'd have to go around talking personally to all the active pilots. She already knew it was not going to be easy. There were many hurt feelings beside her own, and much outrage at what had been done. She could tell Dragonstar was fragmenting. Some people were even already gone.

The outspoken Jikomanzoku, who lately had been demanding so many answers, had been the first to go. Which was ironic because from what she could gather of the whole incident, Kiarra's sudden move might have been done in such a hurry precisely in an attempt to keep him on board. Sadly, if such was the reason, it hadn't just not worked: it had backfired spectacularly. The personnel records Kayleigh was poring through right now showed Jiko had already registered his own corporation. She sighed.

Evaya Starflight had been the second to bolt. It wasn't really surprising. She'd had her share of minor clashes with Kiarra in the past. The records showed she was already with Endless Night.

Kanunu, Feu, Maeliki... they would be gone as well, she just knew it even before talking to them. The same with Taco and Kakko; those two would undoubtedly join Jiko sooner or later. She wondered what Batuka, Tim, Gerrard, Qua would do.

And then there were the newer people. Nosfer and Faith, who must be so confused about all which was going on around them. And Quintrala. Her good friend Quin, who had been accepted into the corp just before taking a celebratory vacation for graduating from Uni Caille.. she'd come back to a crumbling Dragonstar. Kayleigh couldn't help but feel horribly guilty about that.

And yet how could she have guessed?

She sighed, checked to see if Kiarra was reachable yet for a private conversation, and saw that she was not. She rubbed her tired eyes, sighed again and went back to poring over records.

Many Returns

Kayleigh found herself thinking about the past week as she sat docked at the Caille station in Ney, waiting for her cargo to board.

Evaya Starflight, the first person who had taught her anything about flying interceptors, was back in space flying for Dragonstar after an absence of about two years. She hadn't changed a bit, either. According to comms she was right now busy at the wormhole trying to get RedKiwi dizzy by orbiting him fast, in the absence of anything juicy to shoot at.

Druif, too, had made a brief appearance just the previous night. Krak'a Tau and Kessica had also been spotted moving assets around, after being off the spacelanes for well over a year. Last but not least, Dragonstar founder and Kayleigh's old CEO - Kiarra - was back.

Funny how many people had approached the jin-mei in private with a worried look asking how she felt about that. It had surprised her mostly because she felt great! She felt happy to get her old boss back; they'd always got along well. Not to mention Kiarra had always seemed to know what she was doing, whereas Kay herself always felt out of her depth as a CEO. For now Kiarra seemed happy just getting back into the swing of things, but what would happen if in time she wanted the CEO office back? Kay smiled in her pod. She knew exactly what she would do, no regrets.

Fight Night - 2

Last night, after a couple of weeks of finding myself too busy or too far away, I took part in another of those fight nights Gerrard has been organising. They have so far been a success. Even the new recruits have been curious and enthusiastic about it. It's frankly good to see those many Dragonstar pilots in one place again and it bodes well for the corp. I think we're finally growing once more.

But as for the event itself, well at least I did a little better. I took part in four or five matches, won one convincingly enough, and gave quite a bit of a fight in another one (until my cap ran out, Batuka got a little too close and once that web got me two volleys stripped me of all my armour.)

I'm still bad. Very bad. But at least I think I'm making some progress, which is encouraging. It was annoying to not be able to touch Jikomanzoku and his Breacher from hell; I usually pride myself in being fast, but he was certainly faster than me in my Incursus, last night. A good thing he was once part of Dragonstar Racing as it saves face a little for me, but still.. I'll catch you yet, Jiko!

Overconfidence

Don't die on me, Verdigris. Come on, warp, warp, warp!

Explosion.

"Warp Drive Active" - Aura's cool, mechanic voice.

Sonic boom.

This time, however, the shivering wouldn't stop so soon. She kept her eyes closed, shaken to her core. The jolt to her senses, the sting of a milisecond of feedback on her mind, told her all she needed to know without pulling up her instruments. She knew that when she opened her eyes she wouldn't find the Verdigris around her anymore.

Stupidity was never forgiving in space. Add overconfidence to that, and the results were universally disastrous. She had just proven that.

Somewhere in Ainaille she had butted heads with Caldari and Amarrian navies, infiltrated in Federation territory. Right now she couldn't even recall the particulars of the mission. Something about a secret slave complex?

Why couldn't she remember it? Was she really so selfish, so self-absorbed, so overconfident that she didn't even listen anymore? The agent had told her to go somewhere and she had. That's how it worked, day in, day out. See agent, board ship, warp somewhere, shoot the evil people who tried to kill you, save whatever innocents were left in the wrecks, hand in proof to agent, get reward, go back for the salvage and to make sure no stranded people were left to die a slow death in space.

Not this time.

She swore, hit by a wave of rage. She cried out her frustration, her pain, her anger - not at the little amarrian bastards who had webbed, jammed and shot her, but at herself for being so stupid, so blind, so... incompetent.

She wanted to go back to station, tell the agent she'd failed miserably and couldn't do this anymore. The Dragonstar guys were rallying forces, though. They managed to push through her wall of anger and frustration by coaxing and good-naturedly bullying her into staying in space, going back for the Sweet MacKenzie III, her salvage-fitted Catalyst hull.

By the time she got back to the site, it was all over. Feu and Gerrard had done her work for her, avenged her loss. It warmed her heart a little bit that they'd rally like that to her aid. It seemed the Dragonstar spirit was still alive.

With a heavy heart she approached the twisted mass of metal that had once been an Ishtar-class hull and started looking for survivors.

Mining Op Fail

I've been feeling somewhat annoyed since Saturday. Dragonstar needed its mineral stock replenished somewhat so I called for a corp mining op. Since mining is - let's face it - incredibly boring and dull, and since we needed some less-common minerals as well, I thought mining in low-sec would do the trick.

So we got two of our more trigger-happy guys to be our cover, and I joined two of our miners. Off to a relatively quiet 0.4 we went. We got ourselves a nice little safe spot where we could unload as there was no station in system and warped to a belt.

We had quiet mining for all of.. oh I don't know, half an hour? Pirates came and went, we'd take precautions. The first group of hardened pirates came in and we made a strategic retreat back to high sec instead of engaging in cat and mouse games.

We listened to tournament commentaries, mined some high-sec until the pirates got bored and left, when we went back. We were there again for about half an hour until an apparently harmless pilot came in. Corp seemed neutral, his own security status seemed alright enough... in spite of his name sounding like a disease, we sort of ignored him. Until my scanner picked him up in a Scorpion. We got a bit suspicious..

.. and then he warped right on top of us and tried to scramble Feu's barge.

[ 2009.01.31 17:48:18 ] (notify) Ginger Itis [T0NE]'T.O.N.E Nebo'(Scorpion) has started trying to warp scramble "Feu dAstres [DS]'Ore Conveyor Belt'(Covetor)"

Needless to say, we scrambled to get our barges out of there in a hurry, but the damned Retriever is far from being either fast or agile. Luckily, he'd gone for one of the barges with warp stabs on. If he'd picked me first I'd have been dead. As it was, the barges all got out fine and our cover pilots distracted Ginger Itis (or whatever his name was) long enough and then broke off.

We hugged our safe spot, hoping he'd get bored of chasing our combat pilots around, but as it turned out he ended up in a staring match with one of us at the gate into high-sec.

Long story short, we called it a day. We hauled what little Jaspet we'd managed to get our hands on back to base and settled down at a high-sec belt, bringing out the Orca instead. I know I was sulking.

Definitely a bad choice of stage for my part. It wasn't a complete loss - all the ships came back intact, we did get some ore - but it was worlds below my expectations. Next time, I must plan things better.

Or bring a bigger support wing.

Fight Night - Result

I have just one word to describe how Fight Night went for me: embarrassing.

Out of six fights, or so, I managed to prevail in just a single one, and even so it was a very close contest.

More to be had next week, I suppose, if I can find it in me to go through the humiliation again. At least morale seemed to be up. Everyone likes to shoot a CEO from time to time.

Fight Night

The whole Tournament craze has hit even our peaceful Dragonstar. Gerrard instituted a fight night on wednesdays for the corporation - cheap T1 only. Tonight I'll give it a try myself.

It's a strange feeling to go into a ship with the intention of shooting down another capsuleer - and not just any capsuleer, either: a corp mate. It's been years since I went out with the hunting frame of mind. It sits strangely with me.

My prediction is that I won't actually be very impressive and the guys will be able to vent whatever frustrations by managing to shoot down their CEO.

I'll try to give them a run for their money.

Dragonstar Humour (II)

Yes, these are real ships in our fleet...

Christmas

The winter holidays didn't much feel like holidays to me. In fact they passed me by entirely.

First there was the whole CEO thing. With Scavanger still tied up planetside and unable to keep a sharp eye on corp leadership, we all arrived at the decision that a new face was needed driving Dragonstar forward. With Scavanger's blessing and a majority vote, I was the one who took up the position.

This meant looking over the entire wallet, tracing the whereabouts of assets, shuffling corp offices around a little (is it just me or have office prices gone completely insane in some corners of the Federation? What's going on, there?) and it also meant getting some projects running and the employees working together for a goal once more.

Second came a lot of diplomatic talks with two other corporations looking to solidify some deals and some verbal agreements. This is still ongoing, but while now it's well on track, at the time there were a lot of emergency meetings and many small fires within Dragonstar that I, as brand new CEO, had to go around dousing.

Last but not least, one of the projects we got going was the manufacture of three Orcas - some for internal consumption, some for external sale. We did it ourselves, and proudly so. From mining every single mineral we needed (thanks in no small part to our team of explorers which kept finding us some really precious hidden spots at just the right times), to building every single part. We did it. Despite the lack of manpower, the true spirit of Dragonstar came up just like that and we did it. I felt so proud!

And yet I've never in my life spent so much time in a mining barge... They keep making fun of me. My ego is bruised.

So that's why this lovely winter-holidays-type picture of me caught me in an Iteron III hauling around ore that Feu was mining at a site nearby.



The ever cheerful Quin came over with an Interceptor armed with some three snowball launchers or so and brightened up my dull hauling job with a barrage of snowy glee. Oh, and she made fun of me for being in a slow ship, and flew circles around me at high speed. Speed fairy indeed.

It was the only snow I saw all winter long. With all the work and all the little fires to put out, I ended up not going planetside with my wife for some fun in the snow. Maybe next year.

Dragonstar Humour

"Real Racers fly Barges"

"Real Miners fly Ceptors"

Very cute, Kanunu. Very cute.

And no, I am most certainly not a real miner, even though I have often been seen in Retrievers lately and despite the fact I run my races in the Interceptor class. And I will never be a real miner, thankyouverymuch.

I just lend a hand when the corp needs it.