You flip from station to station, you meet folks. That or you sit alone in the corner of the bar thinking you look ‘dangerous’. As opposed to ’sad and so very very alone’. Mike was not prone to sitting in the corner. So he met pirates who thought dangerous was better proved out in space, and carebears . . . . oh the carebears.

He knew most of them hated the term . . . he wasn’t that fond of it himself. It was a stylish descriptor the pirates used to describe those who did lawful actions, worked in highsec space. Those who made the ships the pirates delighted in blowing up (and being blown up in). Those who held the line against the incursions of Angels, Blood Raiders, and Guristas in the ’safe’ areas.

Then there was Kry. He met Kry first on the comms and thought he was a pretty decent guy. Easy to chat with and had a similar sense of humor. They both liked similar media and so ‘inside jokes’ were understood between them. Kry’s face looked vaguely familiar but Mike could not quite place it. Finally it turned out that they were in the same station and Mike headed off to meet Kry. In a bar, of course. Figured it would be no problem to find him in a bar but damn if he could not find anyone who looked as Kry did on the channel.

It was bloody amateur night on stage. One bad singer after another, one current pop song mangled, the next left bleeding on the ground, the third surrendered without a whimper. Mike ordered another drink and scanned the crowd. He was still looking when a new song started. It was not a pop song. It was a very old old melody, something about Rising Sun House. But that was not the words he was hearing. The fool woman was singing about mining. Asteroid mining. Someone off to his side commented on how bad she was and a grizzled guy who was sitting right next to Mike replied that it was not about the melody, it was the words.

Mike nodded slowly. He could understand that, sometimes it was not the medium but the message. So he gritted his teeth and listened to the whole song, the guy next to him filming it with a headcam. She finished her song and to (very) scattered applause she came straight over to the guy with the cam. Mike nodded to the bartender and pointed to the two of them and then covered the cost of their drinks.

An hour later amateur time was over and music was being piped in but the three of them were still there. Mike was still chuckling that the woman was Kry. “You get the name from that old movie?” He asked.

“Which movie?”

“The Krying Game.” Mike answered with a grin on his face.

Sab groaned and shook his head. “She’s mine. Stop trying to make time with her.”

Mike held his hands up in self defence. “All yours. No question about it. I am still having trouble reconciling that this is the guy I have been talkin to for the past while.” Kry giggled coquetishly. “Stop that damn you, it just ain’t right. You know as well as I do that space is a place where men are men and so are most of the women.”

Kry laughed at that. “And what about in stations?”

“In lowsec stations? It is a place where men are men and the women are payed to prove it. In hisec? Well there are a few financiers and miners, I suppose. But really . . . ”

Sab shook his head. “Now you’ve done it, you mentioned mining, and that means she is gonna tell you about. . .”

“Dumpty! My pet rock.” Kry laughed as she finished Sabs sentence.

“Pet rock?”

“It is a huge asteroid I found in a local system. 132k if it is a pound. It is huge!” Her eyes glowed as she described a normal asteroid miners wet dream. “Veldspar, of course. Beautiful thing.”

“How much did you make off of it?” Mike asked.

“Make off of it?” She looked aghast. “I would never hit my baby with lasers. I am waiting to see if it will grow.”

“Um, it is a rock? Rocks do not grow.”

“They do in a belt if other ones get pulled in. I want to see what size it will get to.”

Mike shook his head and murmered softly. “Queen of the Carebears, won’t even shoot rocks.” He didn’t say it softly enough, she heard him. “Oh, wouldn’t that be a title to try for. But how could you prove you were the best?”

Mike laughed. “Try starting a peace initiative in lowsec. Convince others not to shoot.” He laughed at the thought of that.

Sab shook his head. “She doesn’t believe me when I tell her. Carebears are not people, they are floating pinatas in lowsec.”

Mike squinted at Sab. “You been out there a time or two haven’t you.”

Sab nodded. “Yeah, but I am ‘rehabilitated’.”

Mike snorted and the topic turned to other things. Neither Mike nor Sab noticed the new gleam in Krys eyes.

There times when it is nice to lean back, let the lesson implant do its thing, and groove to some chill tunes in your headset as your miner makes a 17 jump journey from one portion of space to another. Mike had yet to find that time as ‘nice’. Rocking to a guitar solo that sounded more like someone being flayed alive than an actual musical instrument he kicked rhythmically at the locked controls muttering “faster, faster”

The incoming comm chimed a few times before Mike noticed it over the volume 11 shr3dding. Turning it down to a sedate 8 he toggled the keys and shouted. “Yeah?”

“Just working out in Amarr space, you want in on a chance to beg for their forgiveness before they start shooting you on sight?” It was Marnora. Possibly one of the most focused people Mike had ever met. Given steel wool he could knit you a frigate, he knew THAT much about the bloody things. Most folks saw Frigates as stepping stones to real ships. Mar had started in them and never left. What he could do with one defied Mikes imagination.

“Bringing a miner into home turf again, the war ended.”

“What was the final score?”

“No score, no encounters, no isk payed or won. They wasted a couple of mill for no apparent reason.” Mike checked the local maps. “Damn, I can switch to a small ship and we can tag-team whatever you got going. Be a bit of time, but not too long, I’ll fall asleep in this flying shovel another time.” He kicked the console once more for good measure.

“Works for me.” Mike nodded and started humming to himself as he switched course to where the ship Mar had talked him into buying sat waiting.

It was not long before he was waving goodbye to the miner and hello to his Ishkur. Running a double check on the systems and making sure it was loaded up for a fight he slid into the seat and looked out over the forespike. “Why didn’t they name this thing the Unicorn?” He asked the air as he powered up and shot out of the station. With the engines roaring beneath and behind him he revelled in the sheer speed of his boat. No autopilot for this one . . . he took over and flashed, stargate after stargate, distance rolling past along with the startled look of customs officers who never even had time for a scan.

Soon enough he had joined up with Marnora and off they went to put paid to a few pirates who had crossed the local representatives of the Emperor. Now Mike knew the Ish was a fast ship, but Mar flew a Enyo that was so much a speed ship that it was just one roll of duck tape from being a Minnie build. Faster at everything, they warped through an acceleration platform and by the time Mike had arrived Mar was already in amongst the enemies, and wrecks were a trail showing where he had been.

“Dammit, leave some for me!” Mike toggled the comm as he scanned for good targets.

“Webber!” Mar replied as a specific target lit on the screen as a priority target.

“On it” Mike calmly started a target lock as his other hand launched the drones. “Drones away.” He dialed in the other targets as the drones screamed out of their launch bays and into space. He set them on the webber and then revved up the Ish to dive into battle with the nearest target of his own. Moments later he raised his voice to report “Webber down” as his own blasters growled as they ate through the armor of another ship. He let the drones pick their own targets as he worked his patch of space and soon the area was filled with wrecks and empty of pirates. The drones returned to their launch points and he smiled as they began to slowly pick through the wreckage for things of value.

“Beautiful” Mike grinned as the salvage ground through the wreckage.

******

There is an awesome beauty in a pair of assault craft going to work. The communication is faster, the game is more intense. You do NOT drift off while switching targets and monitoring all the other details of combat. If you have not teamed up with a partner for a quick mission or hunt, you are missing a very special part of Eve.

Finally he got into his ship and got it clear of the station before the local agents could realize he was ‘free’ again. He set for a semi quiet spot to drop the first ‘check probe’ which he used to see if an in-depth search was going to be worth it.

This time the scanning base would be an asteroid belt, that way his drones could get the dust blown out of them if any rats were in the area. Mike smiled as he set a single drone out to meet the rats and then in the same motion brushed his hand across the probe launch display and set the probe for a very wide scan. “What the hell is an AU anyhow?” he mused as the probe started its first pass.

The ping of the results on a secondary display brought him back the the present. There were a few anomolies of note in the system so he dropped three more probes and set them to overlap on the first anomoly that caught his eye. While they were warping into position he smiled as the drone returned into his bay and he set the small tractor to tug in the wreckage of the rats who were no longer bothering anyone on this plane of existence. As the wreckage came near he set the sal;vager on it and returned to the probe report.

Closer but very very far from the 100% lock he would need to be able to warp to the site. So it became the routine of fine tune the range of the probe set, move them into planar overlap position, scan. Rinse, repeat. Eventually he got a 100% lock on a wormhole. Setting a bookmark of the site he recalled his drones and warped to see this rare opportunity. It pulsed slowly in the distance and he set course to approach it as he ran a basic id scan on it. It looked fairly fresh and its gravitational fluxes were slow and steady meaning it had not, yet, been overused. He figured it had to be good for a few hours before it might close so he double checked all systems and activated the jump while set firmly in the grasp of the wormhole.

Dirointation. Him, the ship, the shield reinforcement was down . . . he looked to the channels and they all were black, he was in an unknown system. Anything that happened here would never ever get back to concord. Flicking the shielding back up online he bookmarked the location of the exit and then warped to a distant planet. Then he took a deep breath and gathered his wits. He turned on a rleatively new program that he had installed and fed it the system information and waited for a full analysis.

*ping* “Hmm, class 3 . . . damn, it is chopping my shield regeneration . . . oh well, let us see what is out there . . .” Another brush of the hand sent a probe out and it gave the initial ‘bother report’

*ping* “Holy Cruddles!” The display was alive with 100% locks with only a single probe out there. Soilar cells, frontier outposts, sleeper sites, the lot of them. He picke done at randeom and set the waro to take him way waaaayy out on the edge of the site so he could give it a look-see. “Hmm, a couple of towers at 88 km, not too bad . . . wait what the heck are those?” . . . New targets appeared even further out as he was examining the info on the tower . . .

}thooooom{

“What the?” The towers were targetting and hitting him from 90 km out and hitting hard.

“Dammit, shields not coming back fast enough” The status on the outer shields was dropping like Amarri clerics at an all-you-can drink event.

He set course swiftly and warped out and rested as his shields slowly (oh so very slowly) returned to full status.

“Maybe a Solar Cell is better?” Again the approach from a distance, no towers but a fair spread of targets. He locked on the first and fired the heavy missiles.

“That got their attention.” Every ship on the overview was on the move and after him.

“Steady, steady” With a critical eye he watched the armor of the sleeper ship rise as his own shields slowly degrade. Then a dis-harmonic hum reverberated through the ship. “Funny, that sounds just like . . . warp scrambled?” A closer look at the overview showed that sure enough he was scrambled and who the culprit was. Muttering a curse he shifted targets and focussed fire on the ship that might be the death of him.

The ship rocked with a steady barrage, outgoing AND incoming. The scrambler exploded and he licked his lips thinking of how good the salvage might be when a second ship hit him with a web. And there were still the rest of the pack, moving up fast. If they had another scrambler . . . “Dammit”

The ship reentered known space a few minutes later, no richer in materials . . . but wiser.

“Every time I lose, I learn. At this rate I will be a freaking genius, soon.” Mike docked and headed straight for the bar on the station.

“What do you mean, no?”  Mike glared across the counter at the pinched face of a nurse.

“According to our records you are not a person worthy of  of the extensive  medical treatments you are requesting.”

“Extensive?  I want to make a freaking clone, not alter my gender and height . . . ya take a few cells and a memory scan and . . . ”

“I am sorry sir.  Perhaps if you worked a bit more with local folks we might get to know you better.”

Mike sighed.  A local mafia had decided that a group of quiet folks, some of whom mined extensively, looked to be a good target.  Now orders were coming down from the corp head office to saddle up and make sure you had a clone handy.  When the don of the mafia was found they planned on explaining in great detail that mining did not mean helpless . . . it just usually meant poor.

Poor in isk, not skills.  Some were champing at the bit to find the enemy and others were off dumping new data streams into their heads.  Mike was just trying to find a safe harbor a bit off the beaten path to set his clone.  But off the beaten path implied someplace that he was not usually seen and not known.  THAT was the problem.

He headed back to the Drake and called up the job offers.  He was happy to see that a bit of his reputation had reached this far.  Nobody was asking him to fetch some bloody recipe or a kids doll.  He ticked one at random then looked to see where he would be headed.

Missiles, salvager, route, and a bad attitude.  He was set to go out once again.  He just hoped someone or something would get in his way.

***

As I am coming to understand it, very very few wardecs in high sec are about anger or territory.  They are poorly disguised extortion attempts.  The corp in question noted mine doing a lot of bulk mining in ‘their system’ and decided to see if we would pony up isk for them to leave us alone

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/dane_geld.html

And that is called paying the Dane-geld;
But we’ve proved it again and again,
That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld
You never get rid of the Dane.

Was my response and I am glad to say that the officers of the corp agreed.  We would lose, in the long run, if we paid.

So now we are preparing, and hunting.

Carebears are still bears, paws, claws, teeth. If we have to we will pod tank you while pew pew pewing with our mining lasers

He did the traditional safety check before undocking from the station.

Guns, the five missile launchers fresh and shiny and the automatic loading mechanism was fully stocked.  He carried an assortment of missiles for as Mike said ‘every occassion’.

The shielding systems were all on line again and ready to go.    Many an angel had tried to crack this nut and none had had a snowballs chance in hell.

Then came the oddities . . . code breaker and a target painter he swapped out as the time allowed.  Tractor and salvager for followups to handling what New Eden threw at him.

Power rigs and ballistic additives to make what he did have work at a high level of efficiency.

He sighed and thought about changing the design again.  Shook his head, moved on.

Drone bay was well loaded but still a cause for pause and considering the alternatives.

When he was a short hop from a station it was ok to fully rig for combat but when he went ‘worming’ he would sometimes accept the loss of damage output to add an armor repair drone for quiet times in far off places.  He made a small note on a check pad and tapped his teeth idly.

His communicator chimed.  Incoming job offer . . . pirates in neighboring system.

(Nah, he was going worming today)

Documents of critical value lost.

(Somebody needs to learn to lock up those files or put them in a folder nobody will look in, maybe label it with ‘Amarr religious tracts’.  Nobody would steal those.

Renumeration for successful completion . . .

(worms will be there later . . . saddle up!)

He touched the pad that sent an acceptance of the job and sprinted for the pod.  It was time to earn some of what he would, no doubt, need in the near future.

{By leveraging real-time analytics, managers across the enterprise are always aware of up-to-date labor costs and able to compare that data against sales from budget to actual}

Damn!  he was so looking forward to this bloody training course to complete.  It was giving him a headache and a bit of a temper

It was a bad bad day to be a data thief in the area.

He slotted the latest lessons set into the implant and winced as it loaded up. He knew it was supposed to be painless but there was always a ghost of an ache as the information began to dribble into the neurons and find a place to be usefull. He tossed the packaging on the pile to be sorted and chuckled. “As is the man, so is the ship”

{profit is determined by the simple comparison of . . . }

He shook his head and hoped the training would settle into a steady background drone. Calling up a map he looked at it, he had heard a lot of pilots had been colouring their maps showing where they had been . . . Mike decided that was too depressing. Because it only highlighted all the places he had yet to go. Where next?

A wormhole, that was what he needed. He had learned a few hard lessons in wormspace and it was time to go back . . .

{ . . of risk vs payoff ratio is often of prime . . . }

Augh, he turned on some music and tried to drown out the background noise of the voices in his head.