Ecliptic Rift

A few days ago, I became fully jump freighter capable. I’ve got all the training required to fly a Nomad-class freighter, though some recent business decisions and deals with CONCORD (*spit*) mean I don’t have the capital available to purchase one. No worries. In about 54 hours, I’ll have Jump Freighters, Jump Fuel Conservation, and Jump Drive Calibration all trained to level III. I might push to IV on some of them, but that’s a lot of additional training time so we’ll see.

However, I need to decide now on my next training goal. Command ships? Black ops battleships? More invention skills? Electronic warfare of various sorts? So many options. At the moment, I tend to lean towards command ships and squad boosting. Maybe both information and skirmish warfare, getting into an Astarte (or even a Sleipnir). I’d want to train some tech II turrets, though.

After making my way back to my production system, I surveyed my current facilities and production networks. After realizing I had created such a mess, I re-evaluated the project goals. Rather than try to produce everything for ECM batteries myself, I’d reduce the scope a little. My resources and facilities lent themselves well to wetware mainframes.

So advanced and energy-demanding are wetware mainframes that they require vehicle-scale power cores and the constant attention of maintenance personnel. When operating at peak performance levels, nothing in New Eden can match the raw computing power of these machines, from calculating warp coordinates to administrating the core functions of an entire space station.

Oh yeah. “Raw computing power”. Now we’re onto something. So I eliminated some of the extractors and processing facilities that didn’t contribute. To build my mainframes, I need supercomputers, biotech research reports, and cryoprotectant solution. I have a barren planet where I can locate most of my advanced industry facilities and a high-tech production plant. Everything else splits up fairly well among the other planets. The water-cooled CPUs that provide the core processing for the supercomputers ended up being a little more complicated than I wanted just due to resource availability on some of the worlds, but in general this will work.

The planets themselves don’t look like much, but I’ve provided enough indoor entertainment that most of the staff won’t wander onto excursions too much. I’d rather not lose skilled engineers when they puncture their environment suits trying to rock climb in near-vacuum. Even without their extra-curricular activities, the work itself provides enough danger to cause personnel loss.

I worked out a deal with the Angels. They will sort of look the other way while I start up some planetside development in the redacted system, with the understanding that my efforts for the Archangels will continue for now. I’ve started to build a bit of a rapport with them. They have lots of lab space available out here, but I still haven’t gotten access to the tech that really interests me. All in time.

On the other hand, they have some weird agents. Seems one of them had a bad experience with dolls as a child, lost a bet, ended up ranting about wearing a meat costume, and eventually I brought him a frozen corpse. Creepy stuff, but I think he had come off some boosters. Hell, with the Angels, who am I to tell them “no”? So I did it, and now he’s all upset and having me try to cover for him. At least I’ve got something on him now. Heh.

Also, if the Guardian Angel keeping an eye over my “rehabilitation” sends me for another load of veldspar, I may have to kick him in the gonads. That’s the best he can do for me? Get 100 m³ of veldspar? Damnit.

A former associate, Joron Darkdust, has gotten back in touch recently. He pulled himself out of whatever hellhole had swallowed him up and seems to have fallen in with some interesting folks. I hope it works out for him.

On my end of the cluster, however, I have continued my mission running for the Angel Cartel. While Curse has quite a few podders floating around, by the time I get moving, they’ve all docked up. I frequently have no other pilots in Local, and even when I do, they’ve yet to try to probe me out. Living in W-space taught me to live off the directional scanner, and so I keep a close eye on it despite the fact that it hasn’t happened yet. I believe it will soon enough, though.

Interestingly, the Cartel hasn’t had me dealing with any Republic forces out here. I suspect that the RSS has some sort of arrangement with them, because I haven’t heard of so much as a surveillance outpost. On the other hand, in addition to the expected Sansha elements, CONCORD recon forces, and occasional independent mercenaries, the Gallente Federation has quite a bit of activity out here. They like me a lot less these days.

But we all make choices, don’t we? I mean, the Cartel has sort of started to warm up. The Dominations don’t, of course, but the Archangels have, so hopefully they’ll start to have interest in working out some deals. They have things I want, I can do things they can’t, and it might even turn out that I can help with, erm, publicity.

So I went back out to Curse to try to patch things up with the Cartel. I’m hearing some interesting rumors about some of their research results, and just raiding their Metropolis data centers hasn’t gotten me what I want. Playing nice with the Dominations should help, right?

Not so much. The agent who’d finally worked with me promised to kick me up to a Domination, but didn’t actually get me connected to him. Now she suddenly won’t talk to me herself, either. Fine, I thought, I’ll work with one of the lower-order agents.

Either they have some internal issues, or I got suckered, because after doing a bunch of work to eliminate mercs who’d threatened SoE hospitals, they sent me into one of their own heavy fleets… while I flew a Wolf. That didn’t go as well as I’d hoped, really, so now I’m down one assault frigate (and a pod from trying to fly back to Derelik, but that didn’t matter much).

I did make it back to Derelik after all, which got interesting on its own. But I’ll have to recount that bit later. And I still need to get things sorted with the Cartel.

Not only have the Sansha threatened the world, but other capsuleers have evidently lost their minds. I don’t want to get in the middle of the fighting, as I can think of lots of other ways to do well by doing good.

So I’m moving as much of my staff as I can out of the Republic. Some administrative functions will stay at the Ecliptic Rift corporate headquarters in Larkugei and others handling our remaining trade business in Rens and Hek, but they have strict instructions not to go planetside under any circumstances.

The rest of us will head to lowsec in Derelik. With much lower population levels in the Ammatar Mandate, the threat seems lowered despite the Nation’s extensive activity in the area. In fact, I intend to focus heavily on intel gathering and information warfare operations against their installations out there. This also keeps us close to Curse and the Angel Cartel. Nation won’t tangle with them too much, I expect. The Dominations will react with substantially greater ferocity than the weak CONCORD-affiliated nations, and possibly they can lend a hand with any Sansha tech my research staff can’t handle.

Now I need to go talk to Mom and get her to come with me from Eram. We’ve not spoken in some time, since that White Rose Society mess, so I can just imagine how it will go. Damn it.

The Bei tower has come down. Not due to hostile activity, nor (in a nod to some surreal rumors started by the NER executor) due to escaped velociraptors. Unfortunately, the return on investment just hadn’t appeared. I’d burned enough ISK via fuel and figured I’d had enough. Ecliptic Rift remains in NER for now, however, mostly because I have no compelling reason to leave at the moment.

So last night, I’d just docked my Cheetah in Hek when the SYNEPUBLIC channel lit up with reports of a Sansha raid in Vylade. Out of curiosity, I checked the navicomputer. Only eight jumps, high-sec all the way. I had a Sleeper-fit Drake in my hangar, too. I had my pod moved over, checked to make sure I had enough heavy missiles in the hold, and undocked.

As I made my way out there, I joined the fleet structure. An ad hoc coalition of pilots had assembled quickly; we had a hair under 50 pilots in our fleet, and I know of at least two others present. When I arrived at planet II, the warp-in point positively swarmed with Nightmares and support craft, not to mention lots of independent capsuleers to oppose (and support) them. After identifying the nearest cruiser-sized vessels, I set to work. We eventually destroyed all the Sansha craft, including the additional Nightmare squadrons they continued to send through their wormhole. I didn’t see any capitals present this time, although some capsuleer sympathizers destroyed a CONCORD command vessel on the field.

I don’t really know why I went out there. Nation managed to “harvest” 65 thousand people from the planet, which might seem like a lot but could have been worse after the million lost yesterday. It just seems like we shouldn’t tolerate turning regular, normal people into True Slaves (or whatever Kuvakei does with them).

Still, I need to get out of here. I’ve liquidated quite a few of my assets and almost reached the point where I can get out of Republic space for a while. Soon…

Nation has decided to pick up the pace, evidently, and CONCORD knows about it. Leaks happen anyway, because (say it with me again) information wants and deserves to be free.

Some folks act surprised, others act vigilant. The Empire suddenly thinks taking slaves seems like a bad thing for somebody to do (as long as somebody else does it, anyway). The Federation now starts to turn on itself when its people exercise their much-vaunted rights of individual freedom and liberty to make their own decisions.

Suddenly the world has been set afire by the mindless slaves who tell us that capsuleers are the “heirs to a mistake” and that they’ll fix that. CONCORD flails about, concerned almost entirely with maintaining its own hegemony rather than actually accomplishing its mission. They’d like to do both, but if keeping people safe means that they don’t get to control everything themselves, then they start to re-evaluate their goals.

The whole thing makes me ill. I need to get out of here.

The explosion at the Ministry of War station in Pashanai has provoked endless outrage within the Empire, which started to redeploy to the border with the Republic almost right away. Did they do this because of the thousands of dead? No, actually, I suspect it has more to do with Mervan Moritok‘s inclusion in that list.

Oddly, after initial reports that slaves comprised the first response crews, Amarr Constructions noted that the crews did not include any Minmatar. Possibly they use slaves from secondary races, or descendants of those who have received family punishment within the Empire.

Yonis Ardishapur has confirmed the events with some inflammatory rhetoric. Clearly, Amarr will blame the Republic for the assassination. I have no idea whether we deserve it or not. Part of me hopes we do, but another part of me suspects a power play among the Privy Council. Normal internal political machinations of the Amarrians tend towards the bloody, after all.

I wonder whether any of my contacts know anything more about this beyond the other news reports. The station only sits three jumps from Federation territory, a fact which likely has not escaped notice, and a jump beyond that to Yulai. Asking could bring a bit more attention than I’d like, though, so it will pay to handle this with subtlety and discretion.

UPDATE: The Bloody Hands of Matar have claimed responsibility. More analysis coming later.

Since re-re-joining New Eden Research, I haven’t seen much research business. Not any, actually. I have plenty of labs available, and I’m burning something on the order of 50m ISK/week in fuel costs for my large tower. Before the disasters that befell NER, alliance chat stayed very active, with quite a few regular folks talking about trade, science, industry, and the news of the cluster. Now, my greetings rarely get any response, and when they do, I think only other lab operators respond. For various personal reasons, then, I hope things pick up. As much as I love life in a solo corp, I also like having occasional backup and such as needed, plus conversation with other pilots who have similar interests and expertise. No doubt, the lack of the reporting infrastructure and whatnot has had an effect, and I understand the executor has plans in that regard. I hope we see those things soon.

So, in the meantime, I think I may shake things up a little. Instead of continuing to operate a large research base in high-sec, I think I’ll put up a small tower with a few labs as (hopefully) alliance business ramps up. I can use the invention and copy slots myself, at any rate. CONCORD and local regulations don’t allow most industrial operations in high-sec, or at least not the ones for which I have equipment, so I expect to redeploy the current large tower to low-sec and engage in some reactions and such to explore some new market segments.

What about you? Any plans you’ve had to alter lately when things didn’t work out as intended?