Haiku by Endjinn

I'm down on inspiration right now, but fortunately my friend Endjinn Nevers isn't. Here's a haiku he wrote:

Such a nice stranger
Offered me some free cargo
Got a pod instead

ISRC Season 7 - Final Results

Final results for Season VII of the ISRC are in. Here are the winners of each category.

Interceptors
Professional: Takashi Kurosawa [VRT]
Amateur: --
Rookie: Bloodpetal [SLB]
Team: Venture Racing Team

T1 Frigates
Professional: Demon Flir [SDS]
Amateur: Julius Rigel / Messita
Rookie: Ayre Rowan [SDS]
Team: Scuderia Dragonstar

Assault Frigates
Professional: Quintrala [SDS]
Amateur: --
Rookie: Koronakesh [VRT]
Team: Scuderia Dragonstar

I myself ended up securing my vice-championship in Interceptors, where SDS also got second place in the Team rankings.

Note:
SDS – Scuderia Dragonstar
SLB – Solar Babies
VRT – Venture Racing Team

"New Dawn"

Whoever had worked on the reverse engineering of Sleeper technology for this ship had been Minmatar. For all the work that had been done on it, it looked at once alien and sturdy-rusty Matari-style.

"It's not exactly very elegant, is it?" The jin-mei frowned slightly at it through the glass separating her from the hangar where mechanics were still working on the finishing touches.

"That she ain't, cap'n."

The capsuleer crossed her arms and leaned a shoulder against the glass, slanted grey eyes narrowing a fraction as she peered at her newest acquisition.

The ship itself, a Loki-class strategic cruiser, was little more than a rod with one or two bits hanging off of it. And it was brownish, as if the rust had already started settling in despite the fact that the hull was brand new and freshly assembled together in that very hangar. It reminded her of a huge log she had once seen float downriver near her home, when she was a youngster still living dirtside. It certainly didn't look impressive enough for the amount she'd paid for it. For close to 600 million ISK she would have expected a far more stunning sight.

The stats on that thing were impressive in theory, however, and despite the somewhat ugly exterior she found herself itching to connect her pod to it and take it for a spin. At the same time, she felt uneasy with the idea. Except for the Rising Star, she'd never undocked in a ship so expensive. The Rising Star had had crazy speeds to her credit which had made her feel relatively safe - and even so the Ares had blown up into tiny little pieces at the hands of team Dirtside back in Season 5. This new one, while fast for a cruiser, wouldn't feel nearly as nimble.

Also... she hadn't yet acquired the guns which she wanted to mount on it.

"When will she be spaceworthy?"

"Technically, she already is, cap'n. The hull is sound; the crew you hired is already making itself familiar with the insides. It's just that some of the shield systems aren't online yet and the turrets haven't arrived."

"I see." The jin-mei pinched her lower lip gently between thumb and index finger, deep in thought. "Call a break for the workers. I want to take her out for a short test-drive."

"Yes, cap'n."

When she finally spun on her heels to make her way to the hangars, Kayleigh Jamieson-Read was smiling like a child with a new toy in hand. The money be damned. With a spark in her eye she wondered how fast she could make that cruiser go...

Season 7 - Race 12 - The Bleak Lands

-- Excerpt from personal logs, 23rd of August --

We made history tonight. Possibly even twice. First of all, it's now official that Quin is the first ever pilot to earn a title in each of the three possible classes. Not only that, but with her insane clone-jumping technique she docked before Takashi - before anyone, really - in an assault frigate. That's not a sight we see often at all in the League.

I don't care that critics might say 'oh but Takashi wasn't racing as usual; he was anchoring the Venture assault frigate challenger'. I know for a fact he tried to catch her toward the end; he burned past me in the space of three jumps as if I wasn't there at all. Yes, my ego suffers each time he does that. It drives me crazy.

Nevertheless, he tried to catch up to her AF in the later stages and couldn't. All the records will say is that Quin's assault frigate beat him and everyone else to the finish line.

I should be happy, jumping for joy, throwing a party. I'm not. I mean, I was at the time. I giggled and cheered and whooped as much as any of them on our team comms. But now the blood has cooled, the adrenaline has worn off and I can only feel a heavy heart. That's because I know this will be the last race where I'll have Quin alongside me on the track. My good friend Quin is quitting the piloting side of the races.

Sure, she'll be involved in the organisation side of things - and I swear I fear the tricks her brilliant mind will come up with - but she'll no longer be suffering and cheering and stumbling right along with us on the track. It's-- I can't quite explain just how much of a loss this is to me personally and to the team as a whole. I can't find the words. There's just this heavy, heavy feeling in my heart, and it has cast a bit of a shadow over the celebrations I should be doing.

I'm going to miss Quin horribly.

Beacon in Alenia

Alenia V - Moon 4 - Roden Shipyards Factory station
20.08.111

Dear Nakatre,

I hope everything is going well planetside for you. You missed our appointed time for a chat, so I thought I'd leave a message anyway. Maybe you're caught in traffic? Is it raining? Are you snowed in? Is there no coverage where you are? I remember how things seemed so less reliable when I was living in Lirsautton.

Anyway life has been going on as normal as can be. I've gone back to some exploration which felt, frankly, liberating after so long. And this week I've been busy alongside Quin, planning strategies for the Scuderia on the last race of Season VII which is coming up this Sunday.

One curious thing happened earlier when I undocked in Alenia: there was a new beacon in system. I'm sure news of the whole mess between Roden and the government reached you even down there. Well now there's a Roden Shipyards Logistic Center out here in Alenia. I've enclosed a picture I took when I flew by.



I wonder what Roden are up to. It can't be a coincidence that this has popped up so shortly after the troubles in the news. As if it weren't enough that Verge Vendor low-sec were under the watchful eye of the Caldari militia, now high-sec is seeing its share of tension too with all this mess. You know I worked a very long time with Roden. I'm still tied to them through R&D and racing sponsorships. I'd be hard pressed to know where my loyalties lay if something were to happen around here. For now I'm going to wait and see.

I hope to talk to you tomorrow, same time as usual. I miss you!

Your loving wife:
-- Kay.

J161138

It was Saturday night, a time when she would typically be busy with preparations for a race the next day, such as the horrible clone-jump she always had to make. But not this time. Tomorrow she would be missing the second race in a row on unavoidable planetside business. The fact had her edgy and restless.

Which was perhaps why when she was about to retire for the evening and her eyes fell on the Melted she hesitated and instead decided to go back out once more. It was about time she stopped moping around and went back to doing anything productive. Exploring was as good as anything else. This mindless sorting through assets she'd spent her day doing was what was driving her insane, surely.

An hour later, she felt much better. Alenia had held no results, but next-door Vaere had. So here she was now, on the Eternal Flame II which she hadn't flown since bringing it back from EndLand.

It was not like she herself was being vastly productive - sitting there watching as Laureline mined away at some arkonor in a system her instruments were calling J161138 - but she somehow felt better about herself. Never mind that the pesky Sleepers had decimated all but three of her drones nor that she was now basically just hanging still in space on a ship that maneuvered like a whale. And yet the thrill of discovery, of sitting guard in a dangerous place.. it was making her feel awake and alive once more.

Try as she might, she couldn't quite remember why she'd stopped going out there in her Helios to find hidden treasures.

She even smiled at the sight of that Nox Retriever gobbling up ore. It had been a while since she'd flown with anyone from her former alliance. She'd have to admit she missed many of them terribly, although Laureline herself was actually someone she barely knew. She'd arrived on the scene shortly before Kay's troubles with Dragonstar and had kept mostly to herself, perhaps because Dirtside figured on her employment history. The same Dirtside which had once fielded a racing team who'd shot down Kay in that fateful Race 10, Season 5. She wondered briefly if Laureline thought Kay would hold that against her, or if she thought Kay might try to do some espionage.

It didn't really matter to the jin-mei. She didn't mix racing with her regular job piloting in space if she could help it, and Dirtside didn't have a racing team anymore. As she helped the Nox pilot clean up and haul, she wondered if she would be up for a night cap before they went their separate ways again, maybe catch up on the latest in Nox Draconum.

45 Seconds

Kayleigh's sense of pride and joy disappeared almost as quickly as it had burst to the fore while she was poring over the results for the latest race. The feeling which replaced it was apprehension, self-doubt.

45 seconds only had separated Takashi's arrival at the finish line from the first Scuderia Dragonstar pilot. It had been a long time since she'd seen such a small difference in times between her team and their biggest rivals on the track - Takashi Kurosawa and Venture Racing Team - and this incredible breakthrough had happened precisely on the one single official race she had failed to start in.

She pinched the bridge of her nose and released a tired sigh. Could it be that all this time she herself had somehow been dragging her team down? Was it possible that she was somehow distracting, interfering, getting in the way? Or maybe she'd simply lost the spark. She felt so tired all the time, these days. Nothing quite seemed to go right.

Verge Vendor, the region she'd called her home for so long, was overrun by Caldari militia. The Federation government seemed to be about to stumble and fall. Nakatre was off planetside conducting business and for the most part out of reach. SPHERE hadn't taken off for great flights yet, as she'd hoped after leaving Dragonstar. And now her own racing team seemed to do better than it had in the entire season when she wasn't around.

She sighed again.

As she stood, her doubts assailed her once more. Was she really becoming a has-been in the world of capsuleer racing? Should she quit while she still had some dignity? Should she go on but step back into less of a leading role and more of a support one?

She made her way toward the bedroom and let herself fall on the bed, curling up into a tight ball, eyes closed. She felt like crying but the tears wouldn't come. "I miss you Nakatre," she whispered tiredly into the velvety darkness.