“Yeah, you’ve managed to ding her up pretty good,” the Republic Fleet assembly plant mechanic said.

—

Lasleinur.

Aura provided everything the Minmatar militia and Republic historical records had on the system. Bottom line; it wasn’t pretty. I hadn’t heard back from Mynxee; I took her silence as my answer. I had decided I would at least recon the agent mission, and if need be, employ some local mercs to assist me in its completion. That would be a delicate balance; I would have to offer them more isk than the salvage of my ship would be worth. Mercs could be loyal; their strength and weakness being the pursuit of profit.

—

“How much?” I grumbled to the mechanic. I nearly scoffed at his response.

—

Reality slowed to real-time around us as we exited warp from the ancient accleration gate. The scene before me was gruesome, but all too familiar. I quickly deployed scan probes, Aura quickly processing the terabytes of data into something I could understand. Twenty seven Minmatar wrecks between sixty and ninety kilometer range. Damage markers indicated massive hull piercing from laser based weapons, with support from cruise missles. My mind tried to analyze what must have transpired here.

—

His cost for repairs was non-negotiable. Apparently pirates in low sec didn’t only live outside of stations. In reality though, I had no choice. I was fortunate enough to find a Fleet assembly plant out here that would have the parts needed for my ship; things could’ve been much worse.

“How long?” I asked.

—

Aura blared her warning alarm across the ship and through my brain; forty four hostiles warping in at one hundred kilometer range. The probes quickly made haste to get better intel for me. The data was grim; Guristas. Their fleet consisted of mostly battleships, a few battlecruisers, cruisers, multiple frigates, and two interceptors, which were already aligning towards me and running hot.

My mind reeled at the sight of them, and my memory flashed images of those two Brutor teens I had disciplined not too long ago on the magtrain; especially the one wearing the Guristas shirt. I could feel the anger rising within me, the desire to turn straight into this fleet and tear them apart. It would be foolhardy to do so, and I knew it. Instead, I focused on what I had been learning in therapy; slowing my breathing, pushing emotions to the side to make rational decisions. It was a difficult thing for me to do in all honesty. My life was war. My life was killing. Trying to balance that with inner peace seemed contrary and hypocritical to me, as if I were living a duplicitous lie.

The interceptors had already closed to fifty kilometers; the time to act was now. Lazily, my Republic Fleet Stabber rolled to its port side, away from the incoming angle of the interceptors, Aura aligning the nav computer to a nearby moon. From there, it wouldn’t be difficult to plot an escape route out of this system. A bright flash of light appeared directly in front of us, Aura talking directly to my cerebrum. 

“Warp Disruption bubble detected, 100 km radius.”

A heavy interdictor had warped directly in front of me. I would have to find another escape route. Entering warp on this course would tear both our ships apart, killing our crews needlessly. 

I fired up the Corelum C-Type 10MN Afterburner, angling the ship’s nose downwards, increasing  thrust to a maxxed out 2700 m/s. The interceptors were under thirty kilometers now; the familiar sound of my ship being target locked chiming through the pod. Things were going to get interesting.

I pushed the mental commands through the system, directing the weapons masters to get ready. Most Minmatar liked autocannons, as did I. There were few things more satisfying than getting in close to your target and tearing their plating to shreds. It often meant sustaining more damage than needed, and in a hostile environment such as lowsec, the more I could minimize damage to my ship, the better. I had my chief mechanic and his team fit the ship with 650mm tech 2 artillery cannons for this endeavour, complete with Fleet Issue Titanium Saibot and Phased Plasma ammunition.

The two interceptors broke formation, splitting into paths I knew were designed to urge me away from my current alignment, reducing my chances at escaping this engagement.

I gave the command to fire. All five cannons were trained on the closest interceptor, whom undoubtedly was trying to get into range to web me. Slowing the velocity of your enemy was one of the first things every new pilot was taught. It figured into transverse calculations; the slower your enemy was moving, the faster you could keep moving while maintaining the same percentile for successful weapons hits.

While fast, interceptors were weak; there was always a tradeoff. It exploded in a brilliant display of light, but I had already turned my attention to the other interceptor. That was when the ship lurched. The interdictor had joined the battle.

—

“Five days?!? Are you kidding me? For that kind of ISK, I think you meant five hours,” I rambled. “What the hell am I supposed to do in this godforsaken place for five days? I have deadlines to meet!” I went on extensively beyond that, but already knew from the glazed over look in the station mechanic’s eyes that it wasn’t going to matter. Five days was how long it was going to take. I could already see the smirk on that bastard agent’s face as I kissed my bonus goodbye.

I sent Sam a transmission. We talked briefly about things way beyond me, as was often the case, but his passion about technical things always left me feeling the better for our conversations. Sam wasn’t one to make you feel stupid even though he was probably more brilliant than anyone he spoke to. That was one of the many things that made his friendship so likeable. One of the other things was his curious quest to find new and easy ways to make life better, whether it be through technology, or simply through profit.

“Data cores? I have no idea what you’re talking about Sam.” I said into the vidcam. He patiently explained it all to me, and how basically I could research and produce datacores, which were always in demand across all of New Eden, and basically profit for very little work. I looked up the agent directory for this station, and sure enough, there was an entry level Research Agent that would more than likely help me get started in this new venture. I had five days to spend here anyway, so what the hell. I transferred the agent’s location into my datapad, then headed for the station magtrain system. 

—

The interdictor had me webbed, had scrambled my warp drive, and was hammering me with its weapons. I was much faster than the interdictor, so very few of the blows were full impact. Either way, too many hits and I was done for. I gave another mental command, then veered away from the interdictor, trying to escape the reach of its stasis webifier, praying that the reset cycle for the warp core would come online soon.

A single Augmented Valkyrie was released from my drone bay; a little something to distract the remaining interceptor while I made the desperate attempt at escape. The Valkyrie might have a chance at even taking out the enemy, depending on how good the opposing pilot was.

Four kilometers. It doesn’t seem like much in a starship, but when you’re webbed, it might as well be forty. Well, that’s not entirely true; it feels like forty, but really you’re only slowed to half of your maximum velocity. Still, in a fight, every second counts, and I was running out of time on the clock.

—

DAY 1:

Societies are funny. One realization I had just come to was that it doesn’t matter where you are, or who the people are, there is always a “rush hour”, that time twice per day where far too many people cram into far too small an area to get far too unsatisfying jobs. Those particular times of day might vary from place to place, but they are invariably there. I had happened to discover rush hour at this station.

I kept to myself, standing in an aisle on the magtrain, enjoying some neo-jazz through my audio implant. I heard some rather raucous laughter, even through my music, and turned my head to see the source of the disruption. In the corner of the magtrain sat four adults; two Achura females, a Caldari male of some sort, and a Gallente male. They were talking, gesturing, laughing quite merrily, and at excessive volume. I noticed many other passengers throwing them dirty looks, trying to ignore them, trying to subtly give them a sign that they were indeed being quite annoying and disruptive, but it was having no effect.

I turned back to mind my own business, as I often do. This wasn’t familiar territory. I didn’t want to make any poor impressions here; just get to work, do the job, then get back to the mission. As I let my eyes wander in front of me, I noticed a small yellow and black sticker placed above a thin yellow strip that ran along near the top of the sidewall of the magtrain. It said “Emergency Alarm, Use in case of Fire, Harassment, Illness, Accident, Vandalism, or Passenger Safety.” Nice. Maybe lowsec wasn’t so uncivil afterall, present noisy company excluded of course.

—

The heavy interdictor continued to pour hot death down upon me. The Valkyrie seemed to be holding its own though, a little taste of good luck I savoured. My shield hardeners strained against the punishment they were taking, and I knew once they were drained my armour plating wouldn’t last long. Things were becoming serious, and quickly. That was when I had a crazy idea. 

I turned my Stabber towards the Interdictor, urging Aura to lock onto the enemy’s bridge. They might think I was bluffing, but that was simply because they didn’t know me. All artillery turned and fired in bursts at the bridge, the damage splashing off of the larger ship’s shields. That was ok; I actually was bluffing, but it was all about appearances. I closed the distance between us as best I could, edging ever closer to the enemy’s bridge, continually burst firing all the while. Artillery was limited for close range combat, but I had enough skill that I believed I could pull this off.

At five thousand meters, the enemy reacted as intended. The interdictor slowly listed to one side, not so much worried about the dismissive damage we were doing, but more because they had calculated my trajectory. For all intensive purposes, it appeared to be a suicide run directed straight at the command center. No pilot in his right mind would risk his ship and crew falling prey to that, especially when they knew their enemy was a capsuleer, and could simply clone himself into a new body should the worst fate befall him. Their ship had a much larger crew than mine. Their ship was far more expensive than mine. Their loss would be far greater than mine. Everything always came down to profit with mercs. I played my hand.

At three hundred meters, I forced the ship to pull away. It groaned, threatening to buckle at the command, but managed to obey me faithfully. I felt a lower turret sheer off as the two ships scraped against each other, but the plan had worked. The interdictor captain had reacted predictably to this insanity; the webifier was disengaged, and as my ship cleared theirs, they entered warp. At the same time, the second interceptor exploded, having been beaten by my Valkyrie.

The frigates were under sixty kilometers now, and the warp disruption bubble still active. Shields were at eleven percent, and wouldn’t be recharged in enough time to sustain anymore damage from the enemy. My warp core still needed thirty seconds to complete its reset cycle, and there was no way I could escape the grip of the bubble in time to make a hasty exit before the frigates arrived. Unless…

—

DAY 2:

Datacores were actually kind of interesting. I had never engaged in anything outside of death and destruction, and I found this to be a new and enjoyable challenge all on its own. I decided to take the same rush hour magtrain as I had the previous day, and much to my chagrin, the same cluster of disruptive commuters were seated in the corner, sharing each and every word they had to say with the rest of the magtrain crowd. It was starting to get on my nerves a little bit; I could only imagine how vexed those who took this train every day must’ve felt.

—

I sent the Valkyrie to destroy the bubble generator. It was another gamble, but I really couldn’t think of any other options at the time. I wasn’t going to survive the frigate assault, and I wasn’t able to warp away to safety. The seconds counted down ever so slowly as the Valkyrie zoomed towards its intended target. I hoped this wasn’t one of those times where it spontaneously decided to quit listening to my mental commands and choose its own course of action. That was an annoying thing with drones, they sometimes went rogue, achieving some form of self awareness, and simply no longer responded to control. I routinely had my drones’ memories wiped clean to minimize that possibility.

—

DAY 3:

I could feel the vein in my forehead pulsing. I knew I was growing flush. I clenched and unclenched one fist repeatedly. Maybe I should just take a different train? But why should I have to change my schedule to accomodate someone else? Would they do the same? Of course not. If they gave a rat’s ass about anyone besides themselves they wouldn’t continue to sit there in woeful ignorance, blathering on about asinine things. I mean, did this look like a pub, or a dance floor, or a grade school cafeteria? Some other commuters were trying to sleep; some trying to read or work on their laptops. It was just simply disgusting. I was losing patience. Maybe I should just write them a letter, try to be civil about it. That is what my therapist would say. Of course, she always said don’t send the letter, it’s just a release for my own emotions, but I think this might be one of those exceptions. I would write it tonight.

—

The frigates locked on. I was aligned on my escape vector. The warp core finished its reset cycle. The drone destroyed the bubble generator. Augmented Valkyries weren’t cheap, but I didn’t have time to wait for it to return to the drone bay. I urged the ship forward, and time and space stretched before me. I had escaped.

—

Day 4:

“Excuse me,” I said politely. “This is for you.” I handed them an envelope, with my written letter inside. This is what it said:

“Dear sirs/madams,

Thank you for taking the time to read this communique. 

I am a man of great joy, and can appreciate and celebrate the joy of others. I applaud your many stories and  shared laughter, and commend you on the vibrant friendships you share with one another.

I am also one who enjoys the ease and availability of public transit. 

As such, I haven’t been able to help but notice your group. You are all very loud, disruptive even, and it affects me. At first, I was judgemental, wondering who you thought you were, that your time was more important than anyone else’s, or that what you have to say is of more value than those other passengers that surround you. I realize this was wrong of me, and I apologize.

Perhaps you are simply and woefully ignorant of the impact your little group has on others. Perhaps you aren’t aware that this isn’t a place for teenaged like behaviour amongst adults. Perhaps you paid more for your tickets than the rest of us, and that entitles you to carry on inappropriately the way you do, but I doubt that, as all tickets are the same price. 

I really am not sure what the right way to approach this subject is, so I will simply and politely ask. Would you please mind keeping it down so as to not negatively affect and interfere with others enjoying the magtrain? I know I would not be the only one incredibly appreciative of this gesture.

Thank you, sincerely.”

—

I was most curious to see if my heartfelt letter would have any effect.