Friday Fiction! Multiple escape pods are available if you are not into Eve Online fiction...
Here and here. They both lead you to the epic musical Eve-O parody of "Dumb Ways to Die" with the first one to Rixx's blog and the second to Sindel's blog. I will warn you, that song WILL get stuck in your head for days.
Or you can go here to hear about an epic month of killing in Black Rise.
OK onto the fiction then. This is the final part of the Jacked short story. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. I'm actually thinking of a spin off on this based on how this story ends............
Jacked Part 3
Inga was staring down at the two from a high walkway in engineering. She was casually observing the two men whilst flicking through the items recovered from the dead sholdier as she waited for her father to restart the engines. The recovered pistol had some form of bio-lock and was useless. His wallet contained few clues to who he was. Most interesting was a photo of a woman and small boy. She had initially thought wife and son, but they were Caldari. It was unlikely an Amarrian special forces soldier would marry anyone other than a pure Amarrian. It was strange.
The ship shuddered and the hum of the engines filled the cavernous engineering bay. She watched as her father was pushed out of the room back towards the cockpit by the Amarrian sholdier. Her message had been sent and her father knew she was free. He'd now be watching for her signs if she needed his help.
She crawled along the suspended walkway and entered a hatch. After a few twists and turns she stopped at a ventilation grill. She looked in to her parents quarters. Her mother was laying on the bed, curled up tight. The soldier was pacing by the door. He looked nervous.
The daughter continued along the duct and extracted the comms headset she'd taken from the dead soldier.
Back in the bridge the Amarian commander was reading his datapad when the comms line crackled.
"Say again 2."
More static as the comms line was opened and closed repeatedly.
"3. I'm just getting static from 2. Lock the mother in her room and go check on 2."
"Acknowledged." was the curt reply.
The soldier left the mothers quarters and secured the door from the outside. He looked down the corridor and immediately saw 'Two' slumped at the end against a door. He quickly drew his sidearm and scanned for potential threats.
"Commander. This is 3. I see 2. He's down. Going to check. Likely the girl is loose."
3 approached the body and saw the bloody wound in his chest.
"Sir. It looks like he stripped off. Wound to the chest. Probably a knife by the girl."
'Three' stooped down and removed a glove to check for a pulse.
"He's dead sir and...."
The soldier was cut short as a door slammed closed immediately behind him. He span around to see the girls face in the view port. The door was locked and he was now trapped in a small two by two meter room with his dead comrade.
"It was a trap sir. The girl has me locked in a small room."
"For fracks sake. You telling me a small girl has killed one of my 'elite' troops and trapped another in a storage closet? What the frack are you playing at! Get her!" the commander raged.
"Sir, there is another door behind me. I'll see if I can get out that.... oh god... No!"
"What is it 'Three'? Report."
"Sir. Its not a storage room. The other door, its an external door. Sir, I'm trapped in an airlo......."
A deafening hiss of escaping air, amplified by the combat microphone, made the commander on the bridge rip his earpiece out, his face scrunched up in pain. He rubbed his aching ear. He turned to the other soldier in the room.
"Sir, what is it?"
The Commander scowled at the captain.
"It would appear we underestimated the captains daughter. She's taken out 2 and 3 and is loose on the ship. Where is 5?"
"He's preparing the package in the cargo bay." replied the soldier.
"Five. Five! Respond! FIVE!"
-o0o-
Down in the cargo bay Five was working hard. As well as the large cargo containers of Quaffe, there was one of spare parts. He had opened that one and removed the ventilation system scrubbers. These scrubbers were located throughout ships and space stations and removed carbon dioxide from the air. He was currently hiding a canister into one of them.
Inga looked down on him from her elevated position as she exited the conduit from the deck above where she'd flushed the two Amarians into space. The small box she planted there previously when they had her father working on the engines was emitting white-noise across all spectrum's. She she had found the comms jammer on the first soldier and appeared part of their standard black ops kit. It had taken her only a few minutes to close the frequency hole that allowed them to jam other communicators in an area but still allowed theirs to work.
She slowly slid down a thick conduit landing silently 20 feet behind him. She carefully drew her knife from its sheath and crept forward.
Five was inspecting the final stainless steel canister. It needed to be positioned carefully inside the scrubber unit so it couldn't be seen with a general inspection. As he turned the shiny canister in his hands he saw a reflection and spun around instinctively going for his gun.
Inga was still three feet away and leapt forward. The gun came round fast, but she was faster. There was a flash as the gun discharged, her knife strike hitting him in the wrist and causing him to pull the trigger early. The shot went wide, slamming into the cargo bay wall. The gun clattered to the floor and the soldier staggered backwards with the Matari blade embedded in his forearm.
"You fracking bitch!" he hissed through clenched teeth.
Inga stood her ground as Five drew his knife with his left hand and, with a snarl, charged. Inga easily sidestepped the rage-fuelled manoeuvre and in lightning fast move looped a wire she had concealed in her other hand over his head as she dodged. She threw a small canister into the air which anchored magnetically onto the bottom side of a walkway above. A high-pitched whir sounded as a motor in the canister activated. The soldier was yanked off his feet into the air by the wire around his neck.
Inga stood in front of him as he thrashed, his hands trying in vain to pull the wire clear of his throat. However the thin wire was embedded in his flesh as his own bodyweight was choking him. Soon the thrashing stopped to a shudder. Inga went to retrieve her knife from his arm. She pulled it out and did a double take at the wound. The skin around the wound was separated in layers, like pages of a book. She carefully took the edge of the top layer and began to pull.
-o0o-
Four returned to the cockpit with a bundle of items in his arm. He dumped them on a table before laying them out for display.
"What did you find in her quarters?" the leader asked.
"Well it seems our little Hellcat on the run sees herself as the local Matari resistance. I've found datapads containing documents and guides from the Popular People's Tribal Liberation Front. In a secret compartment under her bed I've found all sorts of covert devices. She's a regularly little armature black-ops bitch. Seems she's been training herself." Four replied holding out a datapad which contained a guide simply called "How to Kill Amarrians".
The leader turned to the captain who was staring wide-eyed at the pile of home-made devices and make-shift weapons.
"It would appear this is a shock to you." the leader smirked.
"I....I..... I don't believe it!" Krar stammered.
"Well she has taken down two highly-trained operatives already. So what is not to......"
"Three!" Inga's voice boomed out of the communications system cutting the leader off. "Mr Five decided to hang around in the cargo bay for a while.... by his neck."
The Commander slowly shook his head. He approached the nearest comm panel and hit the broadcast button.
"Well, well. The slave-scum is on a bit of a rampage. Tell you what, you've had your fun. Now come up to the cockpit unarmed and we'll not hurt your mother."
The laugh echoed through the speakers.
"You cannot hurt her if you cannot find her" Inga replied into the comms panel deep in the ship.
The leader remembered she had been locked in her cabin but Three who had been guarding her had died looking for Two. The daughter had obviously moved her.
"OK then, we'll just start cutting bits off daddy then shall we?"
"You could, but then I'll flush your precious gas canisters into space. They are also attached to a small thermal device I made myself which actives on a timer linked to a pressure sensor. I hit my remote and your canisters are in space two seconds later, 10 seconds after they go up. So don't get any ideas about scooping them back up."
The leader ground his teeth.
"Oh and in another tube I've placed a small beacon with an attached datafile. The whole cluster is going to know your crack squad got taken out by a girl." Inga laughed.
"The Glorious Amarrian Empire will never...."
"Oh do shut up squid!"
The Leader did indeed shut up. Absolutely stunned. 'Squid', the derogatory name for the Caldari.
"What are you...."
"Look you Caldari idiot. Stop jabbering and listen. You and your squid buddy are going to exactly what I say."
The two soldiers exchanged worried glances whilst the Krar looked on in confusion.
"I don't know what you are trying to say....."
"Wow you Caldari are really stupid. I told you to shut up and you cannot help yourself. Let me make this clear right now, you are Caldari special forces, I have several items of proof which I have been contained in my recording. The pictures in your boys wallet were the first clue. Amarrian soldier with a Caldari family? I don't think so. Then the guy in the cargo bay. Once I had pealed a layer of skin off his arm I found the hidden Caldari tattoo's. You guys are all Caldari disguised as Amarrian. So cut the shit and lets negotiate or I can flush your goods into outer space before coming down there and put your face back to how it should be with my knife.... slowly."
The leader slumped into a chair, dejected. His mission ruined.
"Awwww don't be like that 'One'. I can see you on the security feed. Look, you can still make it out of here with your reputation intact. I just want you off the ship. Here is how we are going to do it." she teased.
-o0o-
The two Caldari soldiers sat in the escape pod as it ejected. At their feet were the remaining canisters with the small thermal charge strapped to them. The girl had talked them through to finding the canisters. The deal was simple, she could blow the canisters if they tried anything, but the standard comms jamming device they each had in their kit would stop her ability to do so. The only way they could have safely recovered the canisters was to get into the escape pod and jam her signal.
Therefore the two soldiers had jumped into the pod and jettisoned given that they feared the crazy girl would carry out her threat.
As soon as the pod was clear 'Two' began disarming the home-made device strapped to the canisters. It took him only one minute to render the booby-trap safe and detach it from the canisters of the gas.
They looked at each other in relief.
"Well I don't know how we're going to explain this epic failure to command." the leader sighed as the pod sped away from the hauler.
"At least we have all the canisters minus the one used on the cops. We'll just say the ship was actually an undercover base-ship for a crack Matari covert-ops team. We were over-run by them. Say there were 30 of them! No 50! Hell, we could say we should be given medals for saving the prototype canisters and not letting them fall into enemy ha....". 'Two' stopped as he tossed the home-made device in his hands. "Hang on, there is something scratched to the back of this." he stated as he looked at the disarmed boobytrap closely.
"Dear Squid. Well done in removing this device. However, I assume you were dumb enough not to bother to check the status of the canisters. Byeee."
The two men looked at each other in horror. 'Two' leapt forward and slid the access panel off the front of the first canister. The keypad was missing, it had been ripped out.
Or you can go here to hear about an epic month of killing in Black Rise.
OK onto the fiction then. This is the final part of the Jacked short story. Part 1 is here and part 2 is here. I'm actually thinking of a spin off on this based on how this story ends............
Jacked Part 3
Inga was staring down at the two from a high walkway in engineering. She was casually observing the two men whilst flicking through the items recovered from the dead sholdier as she waited for her father to restart the engines. The recovered pistol had some form of bio-lock and was useless. His wallet contained few clues to who he was. Most interesting was a photo of a woman and small boy. She had initially thought wife and son, but they were Caldari. It was unlikely an Amarrian special forces soldier would marry anyone other than a pure Amarrian. It was strange.
The ship shuddered and the hum of the engines filled the cavernous engineering bay. She watched as her father was pushed out of the room back towards the cockpit by the Amarrian sholdier. Her message had been sent and her father knew she was free. He'd now be watching for her signs if she needed his help.
She crawled along the suspended walkway and entered a hatch. After a few twists and turns she stopped at a ventilation grill. She looked in to her parents quarters. Her mother was laying on the bed, curled up tight. The soldier was pacing by the door. He looked nervous.
The daughter continued along the duct and extracted the comms headset she'd taken from the dead soldier.
Back in the bridge the Amarian commander was reading his datapad when the comms line crackled.
"Say again 2."
More static as the comms line was opened and closed repeatedly.
"3. I'm just getting static from 2. Lock the mother in her room and go check on 2."
"Acknowledged." was the curt reply.
The soldier left the mothers quarters and secured the door from the outside. He looked down the corridor and immediately saw 'Two' slumped at the end against a door. He quickly drew his sidearm and scanned for potential threats.
3 approached the body and saw the bloody wound in his chest.
"Sir. It looks like he stripped off. Wound to the chest. Probably a knife by the girl."
'Three' stooped down and removed a glove to check for a pulse.
"He's dead sir and...."
The soldier was cut short as a door slammed closed immediately behind him. He span around to see the girls face in the view port. The door was locked and he was now trapped in a small two by two meter room with his dead comrade.
"It was a trap sir. The girl has me locked in a small room."
"For fracks sake. You telling me a small girl has killed one of my 'elite' troops and trapped another in a storage closet? What the frack are you playing at! Get her!" the commander raged.
"Sir, there is another door behind me. I'll see if I can get out that.... oh god... No!"
"What is it 'Three'? Report."
"Sir. Its not a storage room. The other door, its an external door. Sir, I'm trapped in an airlo......."
A deafening hiss of escaping air, amplified by the combat microphone, made the commander on the bridge rip his earpiece out, his face scrunched up in pain. He rubbed his aching ear. He turned to the other soldier in the room.
"Sir, what is it?"
The Commander scowled at the captain.
"It would appear we underestimated the captains daughter. She's taken out 2 and 3 and is loose on the ship. Where is 5?"
"He's preparing the package in the cargo bay." replied the soldier.
"Five. Five! Respond! FIVE!"
-o0o-
Down in the cargo bay Five was working hard. As well as the large cargo containers of Quaffe, there was one of spare parts. He had opened that one and removed the ventilation system scrubbers. These scrubbers were located throughout ships and space stations and removed carbon dioxide from the air. He was currently hiding a canister into one of them.
She slowly slid down a thick conduit landing silently 20 feet behind him. She carefully drew her knife from its sheath and crept forward.
Five was inspecting the final stainless steel canister. It needed to be positioned carefully inside the scrubber unit so it couldn't be seen with a general inspection. As he turned the shiny canister in his hands he saw a reflection and spun around instinctively going for his gun.
Inga was still three feet away and leapt forward. The gun came round fast, but she was faster. There was a flash as the gun discharged, her knife strike hitting him in the wrist and causing him to pull the trigger early. The shot went wide, slamming into the cargo bay wall. The gun clattered to the floor and the soldier staggered backwards with the Matari blade embedded in his forearm.
"You fracking bitch!" he hissed through clenched teeth.
Inga stood her ground as Five drew his knife with his left hand and, with a snarl, charged. Inga easily sidestepped the rage-fuelled manoeuvre and in lightning fast move looped a wire she had concealed in her other hand over his head as she dodged. She threw a small canister into the air which anchored magnetically onto the bottom side of a walkway above. A high-pitched whir sounded as a motor in the canister activated. The soldier was yanked off his feet into the air by the wire around his neck.
Inga stood in front of him as he thrashed, his hands trying in vain to pull the wire clear of his throat. However the thin wire was embedded in his flesh as his own bodyweight was choking him. Soon the thrashing stopped to a shudder. Inga went to retrieve her knife from his arm. She pulled it out and did a double take at the wound. The skin around the wound was separated in layers, like pages of a book. She carefully took the edge of the top layer and began to pull.
-o0o-
Four returned to the cockpit with a bundle of items in his arm. He dumped them on a table before laying them out for display.
"What did you find in her quarters?" the leader asked.
"Well it seems our little Hellcat on the run sees herself as the local Matari resistance. I've found datapads containing documents and guides from the Popular People's Tribal Liberation Front. In a secret compartment under her bed I've found all sorts of covert devices. She's a regularly little armature black-ops bitch. Seems she's been training herself." Four replied holding out a datapad which contained a guide simply called "How to Kill Amarrians".
The leader turned to the captain who was staring wide-eyed at the pile of home-made devices and make-shift weapons.
"It would appear this is a shock to you." the leader smirked.
"I....I..... I don't believe it!" Krar stammered.
"Well she has taken down two highly-trained operatives already. So what is not to......"
"Three!" Inga's voice boomed out of the communications system cutting the leader off. "Mr Five decided to hang around in the cargo bay for a while.... by his neck."
The Commander slowly shook his head. He approached the nearest comm panel and hit the broadcast button.
"Well, well. The slave-scum is on a bit of a rampage. Tell you what, you've had your fun. Now come up to the cockpit unarmed and we'll not hurt your mother."
The laugh echoed through the speakers.
"You cannot hurt her if you cannot find her" Inga replied into the comms panel deep in the ship.
"OK then, we'll just start cutting bits off daddy then shall we?"
"You could, but then I'll flush your precious gas canisters into space. They are also attached to a small thermal device I made myself which actives on a timer linked to a pressure sensor. I hit my remote and your canisters are in space two seconds later, 10 seconds after they go up. So don't get any ideas about scooping them back up."
The leader ground his teeth.
"Oh and in another tube I've placed a small beacon with an attached datafile. The whole cluster is going to know your crack squad got taken out by a girl." Inga laughed.
"The Glorious Amarrian Empire will never...."
"Oh do shut up squid!"
The Leader did indeed shut up. Absolutely stunned. 'Squid', the derogatory name for the Caldari.
"What are you...."
"Look you Caldari idiot. Stop jabbering and listen. You and your squid buddy are going to exactly what I say."
The two soldiers exchanged worried glances whilst the Krar looked on in confusion.
"I don't know what you are trying to say....."
"Wow you Caldari are really stupid. I told you to shut up and you cannot help yourself. Let me make this clear right now, you are Caldari special forces, I have several items of proof which I have been contained in my recording. The pictures in your boys wallet were the first clue. Amarrian soldier with a Caldari family? I don't think so. Then the guy in the cargo bay. Once I had pealed a layer of skin off his arm I found the hidden Caldari tattoo's. You guys are all Caldari disguised as Amarrian. So cut the shit and lets negotiate or I can flush your goods into outer space before coming down there and put your face back to how it should be with my knife.... slowly."
The leader slumped into a chair, dejected. His mission ruined.
"Awwww don't be like that 'One'. I can see you on the security feed. Look, you can still make it out of here with your reputation intact. I just want you off the ship. Here is how we are going to do it." she teased.
-o0o-
The two Caldari soldiers sat in the escape pod as it ejected. At their feet were the remaining canisters with the small thermal charge strapped to them. The girl had talked them through to finding the canisters. The deal was simple, she could blow the canisters if they tried anything, but the standard comms jamming device they each had in their kit would stop her ability to do so. The only way they could have safely recovered the canisters was to get into the escape pod and jam her signal.
Therefore the two soldiers had jumped into the pod and jettisoned given that they feared the crazy girl would carry out her threat.
As soon as the pod was clear 'Two' began disarming the home-made device strapped to the canisters. It took him only one minute to render the booby-trap safe and detach it from the canisters of the gas.
They looked at each other in relief.
"Well I don't know how we're going to explain this epic failure to command." the leader sighed as the pod sped away from the hauler.
"At least we have all the canisters minus the one used on the cops. We'll just say the ship was actually an undercover base-ship for a crack Matari covert-ops team. We were over-run by them. Say there were 30 of them! No 50! Hell, we could say we should be given medals for saving the prototype canisters and not letting them fall into enemy ha....". 'Two' stopped as he tossed the home-made device in his hands. "Hang on, there is something scratched to the back of this." he stated as he looked at the disarmed boobytrap closely.
"Dear Squid. Well done in removing this device. However, I assume you were dumb enough not to bother to check the status of the canisters. Byeee."
The two men looked at each other in horror. 'Two' leapt forward and slid the access panel off the front of the first canister. The keypad was missing, it had been ripped out.
The countdown glowed in a menacing red as it flicked from three, to two and then to one before there was a quiet hiss of escaping gas from the vents in the canister.
-o0o-
Fleet Admiral Korvani placed the datapad down and slowly shook his head. The Federal Navy Intelligence Officer stood at ease in front of his desk.
"Can we prove any of this?" the Admiral asked rubbing his temples.
"No sir, not with evidence of a sufficient standard for CONCORD to take it seriously."
The Admiral rubbed his forehead harder.
"So you are saying the Caldari tried to gas an entire Gallente station and we can do nothing about it? And you are sure Federation citizens were not the true target?"
"Sir, as you are aware we were hosting the latest round of peace talks between the Minmatar and the Amarr at the time. We believe Tibus Heth was getting worried that peace could form between the Amarrians and the Matari. Peace between those two empires would not be good for the Caldari. They could expect little or no assistance from Amarr, you know what they are like. But for us sir? We are highly confident we'd see thousands of Tribal Liberation Force capsuleers rally to our cause. The Caldari would be swamped with the combined power of the Gallente and Matari militias. So Heth took a black-ops squad, gave them surgery to make them look Amarrian and got them to hijack a Matari ship to deliver the gas. If the mission had succeeded they would have been arguing for years who actually carried out the attack. The Amarrians would blame the Matari as it was a Matari ship. The Matari would blame the Amarrians based on the monks who were passengers on board, and we'd never be able to host another peace conference between the two sides again after the public outrage over two hundred thousand Gallente deaths."
"And this whole elaborate plan that could have killed hundreds of thousands was foiled by a teenage Matari haulers daughter who thinks she's some sort of freedom fighter?" the Admiral scoffed.
"Yes sir. Another twist to the story which makes it even more unbelievable. Can you imagine taking this to CONCORD, they'd laugh at us."
The Admiral stood and looked out of the window up at the night sky.
"I understand the hauler and his family have been rewarded sufficiently by both us and the Matari Republic to keep them quiet? We don't want rumours causing trouble even if they are true. So, same as always I guess. Seal the files and chalk this up to another one that could have gone monumentally tits up, but didn't due to simple blind luck." the Admiral turned to his desk and produced a bottle of brandy. He poured two glasses and passed one to the spook.
"Yes sir. The hauler is happy with his reward and is aware of the potential consequences should this leak to the press."
The Admiral nodded and raised his glass.
"To blind luck!" he toasted.
-o0o-
Krar flicked through the pre-flight checks. He'd had to learn some basic Gallente to read the console but it had been fairly easy. There were a few scraps of paper stuck around the console with duct-tape giving translations of the various controls in his Matari tongue. It was made easier that this ship was almost fully automated. He looked behind as he heard the hatch slide open. His wife stepped into the spacious cockpit wearing a large, heavy bath-robe.
"All ready hunny?" she asked.
"Yeah. Cargo is loaded and everything is green. Makes a change not having half a dozen warning lights flashing every time you switch to internal power. Undocking permission is coming through now."
The Iterion V was generally regarded as the best hauler in the cluster providing you weren't planning on going into low-security space. The huge ship slowly moved away from the docking bay, held steady by the stations powerful tractor beams.
Adwin stood behind her husband who was sat in the pilots seat as the ship slowly spun and the massive dock doors gave way to open space. She wrapped her arms around his neck.
"Autopilot?" she whispered coyly into his ear.
Krar laughed. Her use of the phrase of ‘autopilot’ had become a running joke in the last few weeks.
"You know, I'm not sure that the Gallente Federation and the Minmatar Republic realized what the side-effect of the reward would be for me. Between a ship that almost flies itself and getting Inga automatically into a top university, they have also ensured that my love life has improved drastically!
His wife laughed and turned towards the door.
"Well as you said, the ship flies itself and our daughter is away for the entire next semester happily learning about boring tribal history!" she slipped off her robe and let it fall to the floor before turning back to her husband "So if you are not too busy.... I'm going back to our bunk"
As she turned and walked out of the cockpit she heard the computers voice and smiled, the outfit she had put on specially was obviously enough to do the trick.
"Autopilot activated".
-o0o-
Tens of light-years away their daughter Inga was sat at a desk. The small classroom only had two other pupils, both teenage Matari girls. A man entered and the three girls stood to attention.
"At ease! Please sit." he instructed in a commanding voice and the lights dimmed. On the big screen at the back of the room the body of a man was diagrammatically annotated.
"There are hundreds of ways to kill your enemy……. I am here to show you the best ones."
Inga smiled and listened whilst making notes. Whilst publicly her career was to be as a historian allowing her to travel freely around the cluster, her real ‘career’ would be a lot more bloody, and involve a lot of dead Amarrians.
-o0o-
Fleet Admiral Korvani placed the datapad down and slowly shook his head. The Federal Navy Intelligence Officer stood at ease in front of his desk.
"Can we prove any of this?" the Admiral asked rubbing his temples.
"No sir, not with evidence of a sufficient standard for CONCORD to take it seriously."
The Admiral rubbed his forehead harder.
"So you are saying the Caldari tried to gas an entire Gallente station and we can do nothing about it? And you are sure Federation citizens were not the true target?"
"Sir, as you are aware we were hosting the latest round of peace talks between the Minmatar and the Amarr at the time. We believe Tibus Heth was getting worried that peace could form between the Amarrians and the Matari. Peace between those two empires would not be good for the Caldari. They could expect little or no assistance from Amarr, you know what they are like. But for us sir? We are highly confident we'd see thousands of Tribal Liberation Force capsuleers rally to our cause. The Caldari would be swamped with the combined power of the Gallente and Matari militias. So Heth took a black-ops squad, gave them surgery to make them look Amarrian and got them to hijack a Matari ship to deliver the gas. If the mission had succeeded they would have been arguing for years who actually carried out the attack. The Amarrians would blame the Matari as it was a Matari ship. The Matari would blame the Amarrians based on the monks who were passengers on board, and we'd never be able to host another peace conference between the two sides again after the public outrage over two hundred thousand Gallente deaths."
"And this whole elaborate plan that could have killed hundreds of thousands was foiled by a teenage Matari haulers daughter who thinks she's some sort of freedom fighter?" the Admiral scoffed.
"Yes sir. Another twist to the story which makes it even more unbelievable. Can you imagine taking this to CONCORD, they'd laugh at us."
The Admiral stood and looked out of the window up at the night sky.
"Yes sir. The hauler is happy with his reward and is aware of the potential consequences should this leak to the press."
The Admiral nodded and raised his glass.
"To blind luck!" he toasted.
-o0o-
Krar flicked through the pre-flight checks. He'd had to learn some basic Gallente to read the console but it had been fairly easy. There were a few scraps of paper stuck around the console with duct-tape giving translations of the various controls in his Matari tongue. It was made easier that this ship was almost fully automated. He looked behind as he heard the hatch slide open. His wife stepped into the spacious cockpit wearing a large, heavy bath-robe.
"All ready hunny?" she asked.
"Yeah. Cargo is loaded and everything is green. Makes a change not having half a dozen warning lights flashing every time you switch to internal power. Undocking permission is coming through now."
The Iterion V was generally regarded as the best hauler in the cluster providing you weren't planning on going into low-security space. The huge ship slowly moved away from the docking bay, held steady by the stations powerful tractor beams.
Adwin stood behind her husband who was sat in the pilots seat as the ship slowly spun and the massive dock doors gave way to open space. She wrapped her arms around his neck.
"Autopilot?" she whispered coyly into his ear.
Krar laughed. Her use of the phrase of ‘autopilot’ had become a running joke in the last few weeks.
"You know, I'm not sure that the Gallente Federation and the Minmatar Republic realized what the side-effect of the reward would be for me. Between a ship that almost flies itself and getting Inga automatically into a top university, they have also ensured that my love life has improved drastically!
His wife laughed and turned towards the door.
"Well as you said, the ship flies itself and our daughter is away for the entire next semester happily learning about boring tribal history!" she slipped off her robe and let it fall to the floor before turning back to her husband "So if you are not too busy.... I'm going back to our bunk"
"Autopilot activated".
-o0o-
Tens of light-years away their daughter Inga was sat at a desk. The small classroom only had two other pupils, both teenage Matari girls. A man entered and the three girls stood to attention.
"At ease! Please sit." he instructed in a commanding voice and the lights dimmed. On the big screen at the back of the room the body of a man was diagrammatically annotated.
"There are hundreds of ways to kill your enemy……. I am here to show you the best ones."
Inga smiled and listened whilst making notes. Whilst publicly her career was to be as a historian allowing her to travel freely around the cluster, her real ‘career’ would be a lot more bloody, and involve a lot of dead Amarrians.
The End?
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