mikeazariah

Kaye was sighing soflty as she checked messages to see what new task the local agent had set her when the CPR channel lit. Destination Irnin IX. Target: a Large POS that showed all the signs of abandonment. Former owners were Lunar Logistics but they had shown no response to the warnings that CPR’s CEO had filed with Concord.

She double checked the board and reconfirmed her flight plan with the local control before pointing her small destroyer towards the new adventure. The passage was only a few jumps away before she was joining a handfull of pilots is shooting the very large station and admiring its attendent facilities. Advanced labs, mobile labs, cruise and torpedo batteries, all sitting out in the open with no forcefield to show the station was occupied.

She tsked and slotted into an exact orbit to maximize the output of her small vessels lasers. It was only a few minutes before she was asked why she was still flying such a small ship.

“I am saving for the battleship and cannot afford the side purchases if I am ever to get into one. I was hoping the fees garnered from the cleansing of this would speed it up a bit.”

Her heart sang as she heard more than one member of her new corp offer the loan of a battlecruiser for the purposes of this shoot. She accepted the contract from the man who had recruited her and made a quick jump to the Amarr homeworld to climb into a brand new Harbinger and swiftly outfit it for low cost and all damage. It was not made to go fast it was made to bring damage to a target.

Her return and aquisition of a new orbit was quick and the long process of the removal of a large POS ensued. Some pilots would set their ships on automatic and engage in other hobbies. Kaye spent the afternoon scrubbing the decks and polishing all the trim of the new boat before setting before the command console and knitting. She was working on a sweater and the click of the needles was in rhythm with the thrum of the lasers banks as they steadily burned into the Caldari Control Tower.

One pilot laughed as he realized he had brought poor drones for this mission, another had left his extra crystals behind. Pilots came and went as agents and other emergencies might keep them from the full looooong session but there was a steady core that kept the beams of light raining down on the target and slowly the shields fell.

Time passed as the ball of yarn was used up at almost the same rate as the shields of the station. The body of the sweater took shape and Kaye smiled quietly as she dimmed the lights in the control room and let the laser fire of a handfull of ships light the room with a flicker and flash as though she was back sitting in front of a fireplace in her parents cabin on some distant shore.

It took several hours for the shields to finally fail and there were congratulatory message between the pilots when it was obvious that they were now completely down and all damage was peeling back the armor. Siona was calm and kept people on the up to date and on task. Nara and the Funky Monkey were also steady companions. The armor was swept aside in less than an hour.

Hull damage began to show and everyone perked up. Kaye was now working on a sleeve and the knitting needles kept the pace as the armor peeled away. They ALL were caught off guard when the solar flare hit. Ships were pounded as they spun far from the anchored tower, systems shut down from the massive electromagnetic shock. Reboots were agonizingly slow as Kaye fought to bring systems back online. The fear that the POS might be brought repairing itself, that it might be somehow healed by this massive surge made her hands sweat as she reconnected and swung the Harbinger around to head back for the abandoned station. Communications came on as one after another of her fellow pilots managed to bring their beleaguered systems back and also warped back to see what the changes were.

The station had changed and some of the armor had returned but not enough to dim the spirits of the CPR and Kaye almost laughed as she locked onto the station once more. The fire schedule was swiftly back on target and the armor once again burned away and the hull started to smolder. Compared to the hours and hours it had taken to down the shields of the large station the last half hour in which the structure crumbled and melted was a nice finale.

The end of the station was vindication for the effort done by the corporation. Industrial ships moved in to clean up the mess left behind. Each module was unanchored and loaded into bays for sale at the Amarr homeworld. Kaye knew that some of the corporation was very open about why they were doing this . . . the isk. Others were here to admire the size of the explosion when the station finally blew. She was here to put order into a small piece of the universe.

The money didn’t hurt either.

She spent a few days ordering her accounts and cleaning the tubes of the lasers that had served them so well. Then she sewed off the end of the sweater and tried it on. It fit perfectly and she lowered the temperature of the ship a few degrees so she would have more reason to wear it on a regular basis.

She was as happy as a clean ship and a new pink sweater would allow.

Lessons

*******************

POS shoots take a very long time

Nothing is worse than being through the shields and armor and then the server does an unannounced shut down. Heart pounding as you try to get back on fearing the POS will be once again full shields.

BOOOMS are nice and almost worth the time spent.

I can switch users in VISTA and come back to eve still online and the lasers still shooting.

kaye

Scouting is always the key, he thought. He was looking for new prospects when he ghosted into the belt and glided silently above it where he was unlikely to be ‘bumped’ and decloaked. Miners came and went but he was looking for something specific, although if he had been asked, he would be unable to say exactly what.

Hulks, retrievers, each plunged into the belt and fired lasers at whatever rock happened to be closest. Lumbering around the asteroid belt with small drones in attendance like birds fluttering about great beasts. It was the fact that the Sigil was not part of the general scrum that made it stand out.

It entered and paused before heading for an end of the belt away from all the other ships. It hit the closest rock even though it was not the most valuable class in the field and ground it completely out before moving on to the next one. It warped away and came back to slowly, carefully chew its way through the masses, leaving nothing behind.

Each warp in was perfectly placed to attack the next rock and the methodical nature spoke of an orderly personality, not a bot. He called up the stats on the pilot. Kaye was Amarr and, until recently, a member of the military. He called up a few more details to see that she had been very recently drummed out of the same military for ‘unknown charges’. He noted the name of her and her ship and then headed to the nearest space dock and watched to see if that was her base.

It was and he docked and opened a comm requesting a bit of her time for an interview.

She arrived in a freshly pressed outfit that would easily pass as a uniform and an obvious pistol holstered on one side. The clothes held no insignia and the holster was freshly buffed though the butt of the pistol sticking out looked well worn. She sat opposite him and immediately straightened things on the table till the were all perfectly aligned. Then she looked up and nodded to him. “May I ask what this interview is about?”

He looked at the table perfectly set before him and smiled. “I am a recruiter for a corporation. I watched some of your work out in the belts today and thought you might be a possible candidate.”

“There are many better at mining than I out there.” She said, distantly. “I am just at loose ends and dislike being unoccupied.”

“I did not say I was looking for a miner. I am looking for someone who can handle jobs with exacting specifications. Who can work independently and as part of a team. I do not need details but may I ask the general reasons why you left the military?”

She eyed him for a long moment. “My superior officers felt that I was not acting in the best interests of the unit in bringing certain activities to light. I can work with other people as long as they are honest with me. I do NOT like being played for a dupe or catspaw.”

He nodded. “I assure you, what CPR, our corporation, is about is very open to your examination. In your travels have you come across abandoned and offline stations? Ones that eventually pirates take over as bases or destroy to leave wreckage across the systems?”

“I have. There ought to be a law about the duration that they can exist before being removed.” She sniffed imperiously.

“Well there is not. But there is a legal recourse for a small group of like minded pilots to do something about this. We scout out these stations and give the owners notice that they must take them down or we will do so for them. If we take them down then the funds form the sales of the derelicts go to finance our operations and pay our members.”

“You are cleaning up solar systems?” She blinked, eyes coming alive for the first time since the interview had started.

“Hopefully at a profit, but yes. Now understand some people do not like being told to clean up their act. There will be danger involved. We will be outlining a training program we wish you to follow in hopes you will become a fully active member in time.”

“Training?”

“We will want you in a battleship.” He tapped on a padd and slid it across. “I think we can usually have our recruits in one in less than a month, although finances are still the sticking point. We also pay bonuses for people who can do an orderly survey of systems lining up our possible areas of operations. A well scouted system will pay a fair percentage if we act on it.” He paused then asked. “What are your thoughts?”

She slid the padd back across and adjusted it so it was squarely oriented before him. “I think that this is a noble cause with a decent profit potential. Understand that I am working for a small public corporation, the Amarr Schools, will that be an issue?”

“No we would prefer our people could be able to fly in 0.7 space and below but we have no preferences as to what our people do in their off time as long as they make themselves available when the time comes.”

She paused for a long minute and then nodded. “Sounds acceptable. Where do I sign?”

Kaye