The Journal; Walking The Road To Liberation

Two years, eight months. To the day, in fact since I delivered the saddest announcement of my life. Two years and eight months ago today I made a broadcast from an infirmary to all of New Eden, accepting the fall of Unity Station to the slavers.

A lot has happened since, and yet I find myself replaying the past, not just writing of it. To my everlasting shame, I spent the final weeks of the fall in an infirmary bed rather than on a battlefield. Perhaps it will be with an equally enduring regret that I spent the liberation in an equally decrepit state.

Two years and nine months ago a blood clot moved into my implants and damn near killed me in the final sense. The doctors still haven’t figured out what the true cause was, or how to cure it for good. Well, a few days back it struck again, as they warned it might. They think its a flaw in my clone imprinting, some subtle defect in the genetic component necessary to even become a Capsuleer. Some days I wonder if even the Jovians fully understand this stuff, because we sure as hell don’t seem to.

And so it was that I woke up in another sick bed, staring at a monitor watching it all pass by as the anaesthetics wore off. That was when Takashi Oshai showed up, I swear he does it to gloat over my misfortune, that damned Caldari.

“You’ve seen then? It happened at last, the party is still going on upstairs I think.” He said waving vaguely towards where ever he thinks the bars are. I had seen of course, I think it was all my eyes had focused on since I woke up.

Takashi told me of the fighting, of the siege, of the first landings and of the exuberant near-riots sweeping through the crews across our stations and ships. “And so, you miss it all again, eh?” he finished.

Damned Caldari. I didn’t say it aloud, but he could hear me thinking it judging by that smug smile on his face. “Its fate’s little joke I suppose, to try and cripple me as history unfolds around me” I said.

“I suppose” he replied. “Still, I figured we can toast the day here, provided that nurse doesn’t come back too soon.” He pulled out a hip flask and two shot glasses from a pocket, poured and handed me a drink. “And what shall the toast be, on such a historic day as this?”

What indeed? What does one drink to on such a momentous day? I had spent maybe hours now thinking back on how we had ended up here. Of the two years rebuilding and gathering our strength to strike back, of the fall that hit us all so hard. I remembered the day we anchored Unity Station’s construction platform, and the moment I announced its completion to New Eden. I remembered the events that saw us move beyond the Republic’s borders and set foot in Providence for the first time.

And that was why I said it, sitting there with this Caldari, celebrating what often seems like such a Matari concern. I raised my glass. “To Hnolku.”

He smiled, perhaps sadly, and with a slight pause and nod of his head replied softly; “To Muritor.”

We have all lost heroes to this war, sometimes I almost forget that it often doesn’t matter where you were born. The war finds you sooner or later. There was only one thing I could find to say to that thought, and the Caldari sat by me. “To those who fell along the way.” We drank to that, and he left.

The voice behind me came as little surprise, the only one being that I hadn’t thought to look for it earlier. The Shaman never seemed far away these days. “And how long have you been there, I wonder?” I asked of him. He declined to answer, of course.

As he walked into my view I saw the familiar leather pouch in his left hand, the strings untied and a fist full of carved finger bones in his right. “Your thoughts linger on the past, as the future lies before you.” Ahh, it would be one of those conversations then. I don’t quite know when I started to indulge the old ways, I wasn’t always so patient with its vagaries as now. I asked if he had a point to make, he had something to say at least.

He cast the bones upon the metal tray at my bedside, and loomed over them to see whatever it is he sees. “Your thoughts are ever on the past, of reclaiming what was taken, of restoring what was lost. That time is at hand.”

“Yes Shaman, Unity Station is ours again, you do not need your bones to see that!” I replied, my patience might have been running short. I hate hospitals. But he had more to say.

“And what now, will come? This is a time of changes, a time of stability draws to an end. You must prepare to ride the shifting winds, to see the new shape of the world and your place within it. As you lie there now the world changes around you; lie too long and it shall change again. Will you be ready? The bones speak of hubris swept aside in rising winds. At whose hand…I cannot say.” And with that he turned to leave.

I was left with the feeling that he might have made a point after all, cryptic as it was. And I needed to get out of that bed! I tried to get myself up but the room started to spin and I found the floor, harder than I’d like. As I pulled myself up I noticed a small box on the bedside table that I didn’t remember being there earlier.

The nurse came back then and man handled me back into bed, cursing me all the time. I didn’t protest much, I knew that I was going to need a few more days before I was ready to go anywhere. When she had moved on to harangue another luckless escaping patient I pulled out the box and snapped it open.

Inside there was something I hadn’t looked at in two years and eight months. It was an encryption key, one that unlocked a special door I hadn’t expected to see again for awhile yet. Looks like I’ll be seeing the old girl again sooner than I had thought.

But first, I need to get out of this damn bed. But next stop, Unity Station.