Ecliptic Rift

NB: For context, see parts 1, 2, and 3.

Devoid Region
Arzad Solar System

Flames trailed from the Vigil-class frigate’s engine nacelles as the docking bag tractor beams nudged it into the right inbound vector.

A cold, hostile voice spoke over the traffic control frequency. “Arzad 8 24IC station to TLF Vigil… prepare for magnetic clamps… engaged.”

Inside her control suit, submerged in her capsule, Casiella shuddered involuntarily. After this fourth try to capture a facility in Devoid, she’d not managed anything beyond three destroyed Vigils and what would probably turn into a repair bill. Outrunning the large battleships while she tried to take over the local mainframe infrastructure came naturally, but when they deployed their Executioner-class frigates, the Vigil just couldn’t dodge the pulse lasers well enough. For once, she’d gotten away without ending up in her pod, but that didn’t mean much, really.

As the gantry lifted her pod, she reflected on her next steps. Maybe she should try to gather a small militia squadron for help? At a minimum, she could use one other capsuleer to provide a diversion, distracting the response forces while she got in close for a few minutes and worked over the control systems. That would have to wait, though, while she disengaged from the hydrostatic capsule itself.

Goo dripped off her suit as she looked around for directions to the pilot showers. She could hear shouting down the corridor, but shrugged it off. Capsuleers had free run of all stations in CONCORD-controlled space, even if the station owners held their own corporations in a state of war. This didn’t work so well out in nullsec, but here, even though her corp had officially registered with the Tribal Liberation Front, the 24th Imperial Crusade would leave her alone.

A small blinking light caught her attention. “Blasted meatsuits. Never quite work correctly…” For a moment, she swore to have this clone biomassed rather than go see a medical tech about the eyes.

The blinking light expanded into a full warning symbol and a voice spoke in her ear. “Emergency: please return to your capsule immediately.” Her clone didn’t have a biological defect at all. No, the sensory implants tied directly to her visual cortex notified her of an impending…

CRASH!

A doorway at the end of the hall burst open. Grim-faced 24IC marines aimed their weapons at her. “Station security! Get down on the ground immediately! NOW NOW NOW!”

Casiella ducked instinctively back around the corner into the small bay where her capsule waited. She slammed the control panel and a set of blast doors closed behind her, forming a small iris as they did so. Stomping boots and angry voices convinced her that she didn’t have much time. She pointed at a medical drone. “Get me hooked up.”

“Right away, captain.”

The door sizzled as the security guards prepared to breach it. As soon as the medical drone connected the neural interface to the socket at the base of her skull, she immediately brought up her pod’s navigation systems and laid in a course.

She skipped the preflight checklist and held her breath for a single heartbeat. As soon as the guards forced open the blast doors, she engaged the pod’s impulse engines. Fire and noise bathed the small docking bay. Could she hear screams as the pod lifted back into the traffic pattern?

Probably just her imagination. She’d check the recordings once she reached Abudban.

Lyncyne leans into the spanner as she fastens two panels together. Small conduits to protect control lines and transport coolant run across the engine she has started to cover. The roar of impulse engines firing up echo through the hangar as hefty Brutors wrestle machinery into place, but the noise doesn’t appear to distract her in the slightest. The capsuleer who flew this Claw had quietly explained the goals of his next sortie, and so the mechanic felt she owed it to him to ensure that the polycarbon engine housing didn’t come apart during maneuvers.

That had happened to somebody else in their wing last week, actually, when an overheated microwarp drive had come apart on the pilot. A Wolf assault frigate in the same squadron had managed to finish off the enemy Retribution from the 24th Imperial Crusade before it could take full advantage of the mishap. The mechanic responsible took a very long walk out the airlock the next day, and everybody else in the maintenance hangar worked well into the next shift in order to check and double-check the equipment.

Of course, Lyncyne hates the hours and feels like she’ll never get the grease completely off her hands. But she has listened to the pilots or space traffic controllers as they told ale-fueled stories of Amarrian industrial transports and starbase reactors exploding. She knows of the Crusade pilots and commanders introduced to their vengeful god earlier than they’d anticipated. Every day, at mess, she sees the dull eyes of the Starkmanir busboys and cooks working in the cafeteria as part of the Tribal Republic’s re-integration program. Sometimes at night, she thinks back to the girl in her second-year mechanics class who’d taken an assignment to an agricultural world somewhere in the low-security Hed constellation. Her transport never arrived, and while the Tribal Liberation Force had little to say about it, everyone assumed that one of the raiding parties had destroyed it — or, worse, captured it.

So now, in the hangar, perched on the cowling of a pod-pilot’s interceptor, she focuses tightly on rigging the bolts, the housing, and the conduits. Everyone does their part.

NB: This story contains scenes that may disturb some readers.

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