A small grunt escapes me. “Try to stay still please.” the tattoo artist says in his most clinical voice. “We wouldn’t want me to slip.” That’s for certain. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no pansy when it comes to pain; I’ve endured my fair share. There’s just something about get a tattoo on your face that seems to hurt anew on each clone I need to get it done to. You would think with all our advanced technology they could simply clone me with my tattoos intact, but apparently tattoos aren’t considered part of my genetic makeup. They really don’t understand what it means to be a Minmatar. To be without your markings is worse than being naked in the public square of a market hub. They define who we are. They let others know who we are. They are a form of communication within the Tribes. They are warpaint to strike fear into the heart of our enemies. They are a ritual. They are a birthright. They are a part of me forever.

I bite down as the tattoo artist continues his work. Shut out the pain. That is what we are taught when we first get our markings. The mind controls the body, not the other way around. It is an act of self descipline as much as a rite of passage to manhood. Still, it hurts like hell. I don’t think the ancient ancestors thought ahead far enough to cloning technology to realize that some of us would have to endure this ritual numerous times.

Ah well, it is what it is.

I bite down again as another stab of pain sends tendrils of electricity up and down my spine. Either I’m going soft, or this artist isn’t that good.

“There.” he stands back a foot, admiring his work as only an artist can. “We’re done.” He hands me a mirror. Holding it up to see my face, I must admit he’s done a good job. Looks identical to my last one, which was the goal. I hand him the mirror. “Looks good. Thanks.”

I pay him for the fine work, then head off to the food court. I’m hungry …

“Alright, then we’re agreed. That’ll work.”

I slide myself out from under the engine fuselage, wiping the grease from my brow with an even greasier rag. We’ve been at this for a few hours now, but I think we’ve reached the end. My chief technician harumphs his agreement. “Aye Colonel, she be a fine ship and we’ll be gettin’ more outta ‘er than I e’er seen elsewhere.” My computer techician agrees. “It’s really quite unbelievable actually. These modifications you’ve come up with, Colonel, are nothing short of sheer brilliance. To stabilize the capacitor indefinitely, while maximizing throughput of the systems is remarkable. You are a continual amazement and inspiration, sir.”

There she sits, our new Command Class Claymore, dubbed “Tribal Glory”. It’s a fitting name really; inspiring both our allies while threatening our enemies. Milita command rewarded me with it recently “for service above and beyond the call of duty.” Whatever. I do what needs to be done; nothing more, nothing less.

“Yeah,” I begin. “What were the final numbers again?” There have been so many different setup scenarios, I honestly can’t keep track of what we finally decided to go with. My technician happily refreshes my memory. “91,000 effective hitpoints, sir, with a stable capacitor, and power enough to last you for 32 minutes in the most intense conflict scenario. It’s … awesome.”

I smile at that. For all his brains and wordiness, he’s still a geeky kid at heart, but he knows his stuff. Between their extensive expertise and my own, we’ve worked out a configuration that is simply awe inspiring.

“How long to make the modifications?” I am anxious already to take her out, to let her fulfill her destiny, yet I also understand you can’t just say “do” and it’s done. “It’s going to take approximately …” he punches a few buttons on his keyboard, “Six days, six hours, and 29 minutes, sir.” I smirk at him. “That’s approximate, eh?”

“Let’s get to ‘er then” my chief mechanic declares. “She ain’t be building ‘erself.” I nod my consent. They both scamper away, gathering their teams. It’s going to be a busy week.

Six days.

Only six days and then the Amarr will truly understand what they face. They can bring their battleships, they can open they cyno fields; six days and I will be able to bring more to the fight than just this machine. I will be able to bring hope to our troops, inspiration with tangible results.

It’s going to be fun.

As a capsuleer, I tend to make a lot of ISK compared to the average citizens of the four empires. Sure, it’s well deserved, and this rant is really more about principle than anything else…

So there I was, about a year go now, shopping for hours in Rens during a little downtime, when my stomach reminded me of how very hungry I was. I stopped at a local food court, and got myself some nice ethnic food (it was Caldari, haha). I hadn’t eaten all day and was ravenous. The food looked incredibly delicious, and as I made my way down the service line, they were topping it with all kinds of goodness. Then it was time to pay.

Like I said, I make a lot of ISK, so I generally don’t carry it loose on my person. I prefer to use my iskCard. In fact, I don’t leave home without it. The bill was 5.38 isk. Nothing substantial for the fine looking food I was about to enjoy.

I let them swipe my card, ready to enter my secured PIN to pay for my order. The little display showed my total. I hit OK. Then it showed “Service charge 0.25 ISK”. WTF? I asked what this meant. “Oh, the company that owns that machine charges us every month for its use. That is their fee, not ours.” 

Hmmm, that seemed odd to me then. I mean sure, you have to pay for equipment you are renting, but I am confident a single transaction doesn’t cost 0.25 ISK. That means in addition to blatantly passing this cost through to your customers, you’re also raping them in the process. Basically, it’s a big sign to me that says “I don’t believe enough in my business to cover my own operating expenses.” And in all honesty, if you don’t believe, then why should I?

Screw that. I cancelled my order.

As I began to walk away, the manager chased after me, screaming at the top of his lungs “We made food to you! You must pay now!” I stopped and turned towards him. “I cancelled the order.” I said politely.

He was fuming. “You no cancel after. Food already made. You pay now.” (Now I know my Caldari accent might sound a little strange in my recollection, but to me, they’re all the same anyway). I raised one eyebrow towards him, ready to enter into a debate over morality, business ethics and the like, but decided all I really wanted was to just eat some food. “No” was all I said, throwing him a look that dared him to pursue the matter.

He faltered for a moment, a puzzled expression on his face. He looked around for support from who knows where. His shoulders noticeably sagged. “I thought as much” I said, as I turned to walk away.

“You no come back. You no welcome here anymore!” he yelled after me as I increased the distance between us with each stride.

Like I really wanted to go back, but good for him feeling so empowered.

I found another place in the food court, ordered some food and paid for it without any service charge. I politely thanked them, a large smile on my face, and enjoyed some decent food.

Over the last year, this service charge has gotten out of hand. More and more places seem to be doing it, and the charge keeps going up. 0.25 ISK, 0.50 ISK, some even 0.75 ISK!

I did some digging into the companies that issue the rental of these units:

FACT: They do indeed charge a monthly fee for the rental of these machines. I tried to rent one, making up some bogus info just to find out pricing. The cost range was between 50 ISK to 150 ISK per month.

FACT: Given the cost to rent one of these machines, and let’s say an average of only 1000 customers per month (most retail businesses average 300 -700 transactions per day, or an average of 15000 transactions per month), and a service charge of 0.50 isk per transaction, that’s 500 ISK per month. Even at the most extreme rental cost, that’s an extra 350 ISK per month I’d be pocketing as a business owner charging for the use of this machine. I would like to think all my numbers here are very modest, and that actual totals are much higher.

FACT: If you make an average of 100 transactions per month, that’s an average of 50 ISK extra you are paying per month simply for the “privilege” of being able to shop at a given business.

FACT: The reason these businesses think they can get away with this is simply because we, as consumers, allow it. If we simply stop paying it, flat our refusal, then these businesses will have to change the way they conduct business.

Something to think about? I hope you will.

“Alright ladies, all pilots to your jumpgate around Kourmonen. We’ll show those Amarr pigs what being a Minmatar is all about.” There is a chorus of agreement over the comm channel as our fleet begins jumping into Kourmonen from its surrounding systems. 

The Amarr have been stepping up the fight recently. Now it was time to push them back.

We gathered in an unrestricted military complex, sent our technicians to work, and waited. They wouldn’t take long, and we knew they would come in force.

The pilots were well trained. They were Tribal Liberation Force militia after all. Everyone took their designated positions. Morale was high. I was pleased to be commanding them.

That is when the sensory overload occured. I was hit with a massive headache. My vision went dark, then bright blue. I could feel my Vagabond, a ship I hadn’t pulled out of the dock in a long while, slip into warp, destination unknown.

“Aura, what is going on?” I thought, evoking the command to stop the ship. I was deaf. I was blind. Aura didn’t respond. “Aura, status.” I pushed my will against the machine. No response. 

I reached for manual override to my pod. Something was drastically wrong. My mind was reeling at the thoughts of sabotage. The rear of my pod hissed open. I started screaming for assistance.

My crew helped untether me from the network of cables that kept me in touch with the ship. “Status report!” I bellowed across the deck. “All systems unresponsive Colonel! The computers are locked up! We have no control.”

I stormed over to one of the nearby terminals, and smashed it with the meat of my closed fist. “Dammit!” A blue screen was on each and every monitor. “Reboot the system! We need to regain control, and I mean NOW!”

The computer techs quickly initiated a manual override. Everything went blank. The ship eased out of warp. We had no control. We were sitting ducks. We were dead if anyone found us.

“Get me that system back online now!” I could see them scrambling frantically, each of us knowing the perilous situation we had suddenly found ourselves in.

1 minute, nothing.

“Sir, we can’t reboot the system! Diagnostics are showing corruption in the base Aura system!” What was going on, I could not tell you. It is not my area of expertise. All I knew is that I had a fleet depending on me. Sure, my second in command would step up, and Neu Bastian was more than capable, but dammit, it was my fight, and I wanted to be there. 

“And there’s nothing you can do? Is that what you’re really telling me?” I threw a menacing glare at my technicians. “Well, we could do a manual reinstall, wipe the system clean. We would lose everything custom you’ve done, but might be able to get the ship running again.”

Without hesitation, I knew the command as it was coming out of my mouth. “Do it.”

90 minutes later, we were operational. Granted it was a base model, out of the box Vagabond now, but that’s ok. I could work with that.

We quickly opened our intel channel, only to find the battle was over. We had secured a victory against the Amarr, who arrived with a heavy battleship fleet. And we missed it all.

I was going to have to get to the bottom of this. And fast.