TO-416
0.0 SPACE

I arrived without incident at the assigned meeting place; a small neutral station orbiting the third planet’s single moon of this system’s yellow sun. Aura brought me up some general information on the planet: close to 7 billion inhabitants, mostly industrial, prone to war with a history of trying to kill themselves; sounded like every other terrestrial planet I knew of.

After securing the Ripsack, my Jaguar class assault frigate, and a thorough steam rinse to cleanse myself from the last evidences of my capsuleer status, I grabbed a fresh set of clothes and headed for the “Loose Moose”, a favoured pub and grill on the station.

The place was packed with civilians of all races and cultural status; the constant chatter and delicious aroma of foods distracting at best. After speaking briefly with the hostess, a cute young Achura (weren’t they all?), I made my way to a secluded back room. Capsuleers were a private bunch for the most part, and the more isolated we could be from the rest of the patrons, the better.

I was the first to arrive, typical of a soldier to actually show up on time. I took advantage of the opportunity to walk around the joint a bit, making mental note of emergency exits, surveying for anyone in the crowd that stuck out of the ordinary. Eventually, I met the pub’s owner, a rather large and raunchy Brutor woman in her mid – late fifties. The naming of the place became self-evident.

I ordered a platter of wings and a few pitchers of beer, then made my way back to our private room, seating myself with my back to a corner with a clear view of the only entryway into the room, and waited for the other “guests” to arrive.

The invited pod pilots slowly began to trickle in. They were easy to identify; they looked around just as warily as I had. We were a paranoid bunch, and with good reason; it wasn’t every day an interracial group of capsuleers gathered in one location; it was just asking for trouble.

We made our informal greetings with each other, engaging in small talk, and as more pilots arrived, small cliques broke off to separate tables, finding comfort in race and topic of conversation.

I sat alone in the corner, absorbing it all.

To my delighted surprise, PyjamaSam arrived not long after. While we often stayed in touch via NeoCom, it was rare for us to meet me in the flesh, so to speak. I jumped up from my seat, crossing the room in large strides, wrapping Sam in a fierce hug. I was tempted to pick him up off the ground. In typical PyjamaSam fashion, he started right in with the friendly “jibes” he constantly made at my expense. It had been one of the foundations of our friendship, our sarcastic banter, and he was just as thick skinned as me in that regard, able to take what he gave in stride.

“This is why we need to get you a good woman.” PyjamaSam said, as I released him from my embrace.

“Bit of an oxymoron there, ain’t it?” I replied, a smile across my face.

“Oooh, learned a big new word did ya?” Sam replied without missing a beat. That is how our conversations went. We both knew he was arrogant; perhaps even more arrogant than I was. However, Sam was one of the only people I knew that could fully back up his self-righteousness with accomplishment, and while insanely infuriating at times, it had to be respected. The man was simply brilliant.

More and more pilots arrived, and soon our little clique of two grew into a group of eight, all engaged in eating, drinking and rude conversation, swinging our manhoods around, boasting of our own accomplishments one to another.

That is when I noticed Gigaer.

He took me by surprise, appearing less than four feet from me before I became aware of him. It was a neat trick. He always managed to skulk around, even when not meaning to. I hadn’t expected Gigaer here, and I wasn’t sure it was a welcome surprise. The man had a profound way of disrupting my life. Still, I at least needed to be cordial.

“Gigaer.” I nodded in his direction.

“Good to see you again, Roc Wieler of the Ushra’Khan.” He smirked knowingly, piercing me to my core. It had been in one of his visions that he saw me joining the Ushra’Khan, as part of my journey of self-discovery, part of my destiny to one day rule the Republic. And while I wouldn’t buy into his delusions of grandeur, and he himself admitted that the future was always in motion (please don’t sue me George!), his visions had a strange way of coming to pass.

Thankfully, he sensed my discomfort, and nodding once towards me, moved towards another group.

After ninety minutes of this, the assembled pilots were starting to become restless, as our benefactor, the organizer of this event, was mysteriously absent. To me, it smelled like a trap. To have managed to convince so many pod jockeys to gather in one place, then not make an appearance yourself was either incredibly suspicious, or piss poor time management.

I chose the former.

After clearing my tab, and paying for Sam’s meal, I said some quick goodbyes, and took my leave of the function, expecting to hear about some terrorist act to befall them all within the next few hours on the Scope News.

Later that evening, I did indeed receive news via my NeoCom, but it wasn’t what I had expected. Our organizer had exhausted himself earlier in flight, and missed his wake up alarm. He had overslept, apologizing profusely to those of us whom had made the effort to meet.

He wanted to try assembling together again, but wanted our input as to a time and place, to assuage any concerns we might have. Personally, I liked the Loose Moose, and would’ve been happy to meet there.

Only time would tell what would occur in the small nullsec system of TO-416.