“Captain Stryker….”
Huh?…….
“Captain Stryker…..can you hear me?”
what the?……ooh
I rolled over in the surrounding goo, got my hands and knees under me, and slowly rose to my feet. The amniotic fluid slithered off me as I spit it out of my mouth and wiped my eyes with the small towel that had been placed in my hand. I could not help but think that is was going to be days if not weeks before some parts of my body, those places that you don’t talk about in polite society, were going to feel as if all this gunk was finally gone. This was my first time transferring to a clone … my mouth tasted like old shoe … maybe there was some carpet nearby I could lick to get the taste out…
“….we have your new NeoCom here and…”
“Wait, hold on, I missed all of that, can you start again from the beginning?”
“…sure…Captain Stryker, you are currently in the Egbonbet VI Moon 11 station. You were transferred here to this clone at the demise of your ship, pod, and previous … uh … form. We have run a battery of diagnostic tests and there seem to have been no physical issues with the transfer. The showers…”
“Wait, hold on, you specified physical issues, I am assuming there were other issues?”
“Well, yes sir. It seems your clone had not been kept upgraded. You lost some of your training for, lets see, ahh, mining barges. You will need to run a refresher course to take care of that. Otherwise everything else looks fine. The showers are right through that door. A new flight suit has been provided as well with all the appropriate corporation insignia and is hanging alongside the shower. We have your new NeoCom here. It has synched to your accounts and has all your mail and agent information. Pend Insurance has deposited the payout on your lost ship to your account already, and your new ship is down in the hangar. Will there be anything else?”
“um…no…thanks…sorry to be such a pain.”
“Not a problem, sir. We are happy to have been of service. Fly safely, Captain.”
As the technician headed out one door, I turned to head through the door indicated as containing the showers. Wow, I was really slow right now. It hit me that the technician was female and here I had been standing there in my birthday suit having a conversation with her. Being a capsuleer, you tend to lose that self-consciousness after a while, but I had not picked up on the fact that she was anchored on my eyes in an attempt not to seem to forward. Ah well.
As the hot water washed over me, the events that brought me here rolled across in front of my mind’s eye.
Needing to upgrade my Mechanical Engineering datacore intake, I had “beat” on my NeoCom until it made a suggestion that seemed reasonable. It looked like shifting my R and D effort in this regard to Boundless Creation would be more profitable. Of course, the closest agent of a decent level was in Hagilur. Hmmm, 0.4 sec. Not my favorite place to be, but I figure I could base out of Bei, and just run into Hagilur to pick up the missions.
The crew had Thresher prepped and ready to go, and I got that old tingle in my fingers as I hit the engine start switches. Presently I got the all systems go message and we launched. The warp from the station in Bei to the Bei/Hagilur gate was uneventful, and the crew kept busy with standard maintenance tasks. Just prior to engaging the jump gate, I toggled the battle stations alarm and sent all crew to the appropriate posts. We weren’t going to attempt this in a half-assed manner.
As Thresher cleared jump, I locked the navcomp on Hagilur V Moon 8 and hit the warp button. As we were realigning, my eyes were drawn to the overview and I realized that I had a red indicator on a ship that was less than 5000 meters from Thresher. I immediately lit up Threshers armor hardners and sensor boosters and had the gun crews load and prep the guns. Man, I was definitely not on the ball. Just before we accelerated to warp, the ship marked red warped out in a different direction.
I checked local, and breathed a huge sigh of relief. That had been one of Mynxee’s Hellcats. Her ship had looked small, though I had not gotten enough of a fix on her to know what type. It wouldn’t have mattered. From what I have heard, a single Hellcat could take a newbie frigate and kick the crap out of my Myrmidon. Well, at least the Thresher with me flying it.
We slid into the docking perimeter at our target station and quickly docked. As the crew prepped Thresher to go back out, I took a stroll down to see Letreid Aunared. She had a mission for me over in Anher, dealing with the Angel Cartel. Good, I always enjoyed a good fight with them. Plus, Anher was back in high sec.
After the excitement of our initial entry into low sec, the battle with the Angels was pretty anticlimactic as Threshers tank barely got exercised. We never had to light off the second armor repper, and what her rail battery couldn’t track, her Hobgoblins could. It was good low risk practice for the drone and gun crews, and gave my electronic techs a chance to do some fine-tuning on our hardners. After downing the last Angel, we headed back through Hagilur to turn in the mission and go get the Scow, which was sitting in Bei. Time to salvage.
The crew of the Garbage Scow had been notified as we reentered the Bei system and had her powered up and ready to go when we docked the Thresher. I sprinted from dock to dock and we were back out heading to the Bei/Hagilur gate in record time. To bad I was in such a hurry.
As we came out of jump in Hagilur, Scow’s overview lit up with large swaths of red. There were at least 10 ships sitting within 20km of the gate, and they were all marked red. I was 13km off the gate. With the new salvaging rigs on the Scow, even with afterburner running, I was going to barely be able to squeak out 300m/sec. With no tank, going back to the gate was not an option. I hit the abandon ship alarm and sent the crew to their escape pods. I locked the navcomp on Hagilur V Moon 8 in preparation for attempting to warp out of this.
With one hand I hit the warp button and with the other I hit the launch button for the escape pods. I hoped everyone had made it to them. I had waited right up to the second when the gate cloak was going to drop. Even being a destroyer, the Scow took a moment to shift alignment and commence acceleration. We were target locked almost instantly, and within fractions of a second shields were gone and armor was shredding into space.
I continued to slam the warp button hoping that even if the ship got blown, my pod would still get to warp before they blew it too. Now that I think about it, I think the HUD showed the Scow starting to accelerate to warp and then being yanked down, but I got podded so fast, that I don’t know if that was real, or just a cloning dream.
As I toweled off and put my jumpsuit on, I kept hoping that all my crewmembers got clear. They definitely deserved a better capsuleer than I had proven to be. I knew of at least two errors I had made.
I had previously read something on my NeoCom posted by Mynxee about being in a situation like that. First, I should have found the celestial object closest to my current alignment. Second, upon realizing that the ship was a loss, I should have attempted to self-destruct, in hopes of catching them enough off guard that my pod would have made it into warp. Maybe that is the difference between combat pilots like Mynxee, and her ladies, and care bears like me. They think of these things in the moment, and I think of them after the fact.
Maybe I would have been better off if the Hellcat I had seen earlier had come after me. At least the Hellcats have the reputation of offering ransoms on pods and ships at times.
As I headed down to the hangar to climb into the bright, shiny new Velator I was given as recompense for this, I was already multi tasking over my NeoCom. Time to purchase a new salvager, and to figure out a better set of agents. Going back into low sec just doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore.
Rayne Stryker