First Solo

Within the confines of her pod Kayleigh stretched. She liked the quiet days, true, but this endless staring at asteroids bored her to tears. With a sigh, she ran another directional scan around her. Nothing and more nothing.

Over in corporate frequencies there was some idle chatter going on which she didn’t much feel like taking part in. She had been unable to contact Nakatre for a little distraction, either. Kayleigh Jamieson-Read was stuck staring at a Retriever chipping away at rocks through her camera drones. Her strip miners finished a cycle and she watched the indicator for her cargo hold confirm the intake. Almost idly she ran another scan.

It took her a moment to realise something had actually changed. Core probes and a Magnate somewhere out there. Adrenaline immediately kicked in. She aligned the Dantan Express toward the tower and while it accelerated she shut down the strip miners and scooped whatever she could from the jet can, while she warned her corp mates that there was an intruder in their space. Sadly, no one was close enough to help.

The slow barge entered warp without incident. Grey eyes trained on directional scan and refreshing it often, Kayleigh was surprised the Magnate remained uncloaked. What was this guy doing? She kept wondering as she went out of scan range and her home tower materialised ahead of her.

Whatever he was doing, he was unlikely to home in on precisely the asteroid belt where she had been parked, not with core probes, so on impulse she changed ships into a hauler and turned back. It would be just a quick run. She’d be damned if she was going to be bored all that time and then see all her hard work robbed from under her nose.

As quick as she could, she maneuvered to scoop up her can and then realigned back home. Much to her surprise her scanner was still showing the five probes and uncloaked Magnate. Either he was trying to mess with her or – the most likely prospect – he didn’t know what he was doing.

Within minutes, she was boarding the Stalker after securing her cargo of ore. Scowling at her directional scanner, she warped to a safe and cloaked. “Where are you?” she thought to herself in a sing-song voice. It didn’t take her long to pinpoint him around the star. It still puzzled that he would be uncloaked all this time. Biting her lip, she aimed the Hound at the star and warped at range.

The Stalker came out of warp a good 500km away from the Magnate. That was bad. Without breaking cloak she would take forever to catch up to him. She tried anyway, true to the racer in her, and chased after this Von Brimstoner person. When a spatial phenomenon occluded him from sight, she was dismayed. Had he cloaked? Had he warped out? No, her scanner still put him squarely ahead of her somewhere in space. So she kept going and sure enough a few minutes later he reappeared, closer but still impossibly far away.

When next he disappeared from visual, she tried something different. Hoping the glitch was working both ways, she uncloaked and gave her engine a burst. Her lips curled into a smile; much better, now. Once the cycle was almost done she cloaked again. And that’s when the Magnate disappeared from her scanner. She cursed herself for her impatience. She had no doubt spooked her prey.

She warped out, tried several scanning spots but he was gone, either cloaked in hiding or gone back to empire space. After a while, things seemed quiet so she went back to her Retriever and the rock she’d been working on. Assuming all would go back to normal, she lowered her guard and the usual boredom settled back into her.

Not ten minutes after getting settled, she was jarred awake by the arrival of a ship. Another spike of adrenaline coursed through her as she scrambled to align and warp out even before she took a good look at it. A Sigil?! In this place?! As the Dantan Express gained speed she confirmed it; it was Von Brimstoner again.

This time she went straight for the Hound when she reached the ship hangars. She warped at range, cloaked, expecting to find the ship gone… but no! There he was, still in his Sigil and mining with his tiny little mining lasers aimed at the biggest rocks of Spodumain around the place.

The jin-mei hesitated, torn between defending her territory and reluctance to attack a basically unarmed vessel. In the end, she reminded herself that this was their home, their territory, their livelihood. They had paid dearly for the right to it in ships, crew, manpower and hours of patrolling. This man was able to be there in his little ship because she herself had cleared out the local Sleepers before. She started approaching, wary of any rocks that might break her cloak.

“It’s not like he doesn’t know people live here,” she thought to herself. “He saw me. I was in a mining barge. The tower appears on directional scan from the exit mouth. What exactly does he think I warped out for? This is a dangerous place. Not the high-sec he seems to think he’s still flying in.”

Building up her resolve, she did her approach. A simple act of aggression for most people, but something she’d hardly ever done before, much less all on her own. And this guy had no idea what was about to hit him.

At 30km she uncloaked and immediately launched a bomb. Grey eyes glued to the bomb’s trajectory, she maneuvered at the same time to place herself at a favourable orbit. She needn’t have troubled. Her single bomb instantly turned the Sigil into so much twisted metal. She cloaked herself again, eyes on the pod. “Go on, get away from here,” she spoke within her mind, as if he could hear her. And then when he did warp out, she realised he should count himself lucky. If any other of her corp mates had been doing the hunting Von Brimstoner would likely have found his trip home an instantaneous one.

She watched the capsule signature disappear from her directional scanner. “Be smart. Don’t come back.”

War on Ice?

Kayleigh sighed for what might well have been the hundredth time. Bored, bored bored. Corporate banter could only go so far, after all. Sittting still, staring at the very same huge chunk of ice tended to make people go quiet, most likely out of the same utter boredom she was feeling right now.

She couldn’t for the life of her fathom what made people harvest this for a living. Desperation, likely. She glanced at her own assistant, Laureline, sitting nearby in the Masalle, a Retriever which had started its career belonging to Kay. She as working hard to get a Mackinaw and mine even more ice. Kayleigh might not understand the appeal, but she was sure willing to buy her ice for Sphere’s wormhole control tower.

Another sigh. And then suddenly she noticed the blinking icon informing her a new message had arrived. The jin-mei took her eyes off the static scene outside and opened it. CONCORD? A war dec? She arched her eyebrows, incredulous as she read again to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.

A moment later, she broke silence on corporate comms. “Has anyone else noticed someone declared war on us? Does anyone even know who they are?”

The Unknown

It's funny how most signatures nowadays get left alone in Ney. I've been sitting at a Gravimetric site for the better part of an hour, now, and no one has come to see what it's about. Am I just getting lucky or is everyone truly off exploring uncharted territory?

I know most of the alliance guys are busy off who knows where. Chatter is filled with references to uncharted space, talk of dumping things in stations and plans for other encounters.

And I don't know why I feel slightly left out. It's too late and I'm too tired to go far from home, anyway. So why? Maybe I just envy them the fact they are adventuring into the unknown.

...

I think I need a change of scenery.

J144636

Such a strange day, waking up to the terrible, horrifying news of Seyllin, stuck in Ney myself with no real way of helping. When confirmation came of the final fate of Seyllin I, it was too late for anything. I still shiver when I think of the fate of so many out there.

In the end, staying at home staring at the news holos only kept chilling my heart. So I went out, hopping from star system to star system, trying not to look too closely at planets, haunted by images from the news.

I picked up the Melted from Amarrian space and flew it back, taking the chance to try out the new probes. They certainly seem to be a lot more effective.

However, I got interrupted by cheers in alliance channel. Deathlords had found a wormhole. Trust pilots who really believe they are demigods to defy laws of physics and Concord warnings; they dived into it.

Soon reports were coming back of encounters with alien species and gas clouds! There were gas clouds out there to be had, and only a few in alliance with skills and equipment for it. I am one of them. I ran 17 jumps to get my harvester, then 25 more to where the wormhole had been found. Together with Deathlords, I jumped in.


It was strange being in a place where you knew no other capsuleer had ever been. I later wished I were sharing it with Nakatre, but first I had to deal with the pesky locals. Who are these - Sleeper, I hear people calling them? Nasty guys. They came after my drones with a vengeance, but they refused to reply to hailing calls.

I repelled the few frigates which came at my harvesting Brutix, while over comms the other alliance guys dealt with much bigger threats elsewhere in system. I finally sat in my cloud with Deathlords in his hauler by my side and I gathered gas.

It was eerily calm, out there. Nothing showed in local channels, because there were no gates, no beacons, no nothing relaying signals. It made my hair stand on end. I'm glad the wormhole held and we're all back in charted space.

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.

Um...

It's late.

I was going to mine ice.

Ice is boring.

So I had a little accident.

Did I mention it's late?