– by Lhun

A young man lounges on a bed of red tendrils, slowly glowing in the night air. The stars are bright, numerous and inviting.

Asbjorn longed for the days when they were mysterious points of light that children wished on, and when a red white ball of some mighty celestial object would streak across the face of the two moons he didn’t wonder if his school’s modern history curriculum would be changing again.

At 15, the young Minmatar was coming of age. His grandmother was pushing him to “reconnect to his roots” but, like many other Thukker children, he didn’t care much for the lengthy and painful tattooing process. As soon as he was old enough to choose, the small smattering of family milestones streaked across his tanned olive skin were made possible with tiny Galentian nanomachines, genetically (and much to Asbjorn’s delight, painlessly) altering the pigment concentration of his skin into complex and artistic patterns.

It was the last night he would look at the stars with wonder and a sense of safety.

The warm, red creature below him shuddered. A silicon based “simple lifeform” the holoreel in his environmental hazards class explained. Most likely carried as cargo on Amarr transport ships, they spread across his planet rapidly. They absorb particles of carbon and silicon – extremely useful for the tiny bits of dust nanomachines and drones spew out during hull restructuring processes – keeping the people onboard from having horrible lung failures. A cheap solution for slaver transports, which would spare the expense of complex filtering systems. As for his planet’s indigenous life forms, they were mostly carbon based, and have been nearly choked out of existence when they made their way onto the surface. The rich mineral deposits proved a boon for them, and, as Asbjorn was soon to find out, others as well.

His planet was nestled in what used to be a quiet pocket of space far, far away from CONCORD and other prying eyes. His grandmother, Dagrun, would go on and on about how wonderful his parents were, and how he should aspire to be just like them. The rest of the galaxy considered them nomads – but, according to Dagrun – they were seeking a new dawn. 135 Years had passed and she was starting to show it. Born near the end of the rebellion, she had seen it all – but she seemed distracted lately. He wondered if her memory might be fading on her.

A small point of light, growing in intensity, distracted Asbjorn from his musings of family history. It appeared to be concentrated slightly above the wobbling point of light he associated with the university anchored to the largest moon. From his vantage point, it appeared to be at the very top of the large, inactive volcano that was the figurehead of this region. A great climb to a point of light he considered his hope of getting off the pile of scrap-metal and arid air his grandmother oddly clinged to. To that day, he could never understand her feverish need to own property here.

The glittering station winked out.

Streaks of red and blue and white, followed by thick, oily black smoke began to pour from the the night sky. But, this wasn’t the volcano.

A series of sudden and sharp claps, slow, at first, maybe once per second, began to roll like thunder across the field. The tendrils of his temporary bed retreated into the rock rapidly, dropping him onto his back. Asbjorn quickly stood, all his attention focused at the tip of the mountain. The station was gone, and the debris was falling towards him, growing in size. More claps. The sound was getting louder and more rapid, like the gods had pointed the wind at a bonfire, and all manner of ash and ember was rushing towards him. Screaming, somewhere behind him, being drowned out by the sound of the debris from the station breaking the sound barrier as it entered the atmosphere. The boy couldn’t dare turn away. Transfixed in horror and wonder, he stared as a sizable chunk of Caldari docking bay grew closer and closer.

“GET INSIDE, CHILD!”

Dagrun screamed to her grandson across an acre of grains but to no avail. He wasn’t moving. Soon enough, her attempts to shield him from the outside would be undone. She had been warned days previous that the invading alliance was coming to put who-knows-what matter of refinery near the volcano, the gasses trapped under the rock soon to be freed to build it’s machines of war. Her hands were behind her back, her fingertips brushing the cold metal edge of last connective implant on her spine. Memories of the attack on the Hurricane she piloted flashing through her mind, her own children screaming through the coms for her to eject the tiny emergency vessels to save them and members of their crew. They fell on deaf ears. She had given up. Being chased relentlessly had worn her thin, and even as she operated a ship full of hundreds of lives, her only thought was of the station which housed her clone. Would it still be there? Or would she end up somewhere in Matar, an emergency information transfer because the station she once called home was blasted to dust.

Her fate, it seemed, was not to die so soon. The trajectory systems on her capsule failed, and, blasted towards the surface of the planet, she waited for death. It seems that capsules, however, are much tougher then they seem to be when blasted with the most powerful of lasers in the known universe. Unscathed, she emerged in a sea of fire and rubble, disconnected from the datastream. Several ruined escape vessels surrounded her, many destroyed on impact. One housed her eldest son’s infant child. Too young to be cloned, born in the traditional way – this was a life that would be over soon if she didn’t protect it. That moment changed Dagrun’s outlook on everything.

The scene about to play out was not unlike the one 15 years ago. A rebirth in flame. As the huge bits of station crashed to earth Asbjorn was shook to the ground. One last rumble and everything would be silent, forever.

The crash of the station bulkhead had taken it’s toll on the young boys fragile eardrums. Blood poured down the sides of his face, making a sick red line along his angular jaw. The pain was insane. He might have been screaming. He felt himself being lifted by a harvester drone and rapidly driven to the small, round home across the wheat field which was now burning. The night sky was streaked with orange, purple and white light: they were the capitol laser cannons finding their marks, oblivious to the inhumane scene below.

Asbjorn awoke with Dagrun rushing around the small, stainless steel room that housed the remains of the former capsuleer’s pod. A row of containers with tiny labels was along the northern wall, behind a thick glass plate. Some containing liquids, others with the fine powder of refined minerals. Dagrun’s facial expressions changed from one moment to the next, her mouth moving silently. The only sound he could hear was a screeching ringing in his head. His arms were bound to a soft bed, where he could see a tiny trail of blood droplets leading to his head. “Oh fuck, what happened…” His thoughts trailed off as the tiny machine beside him clicked, and a small amount of what he could only imagine was a illegal drug pumped into his veins. “White.”, he thought, “everything is white.”

Dagrun rushed about, gathering tiny vials of nanomachines. All the ones used to heal flesh were long gone. The best she could hope for was some sort of implant. Her hands brushed across a tiny deepspace FTL communications implant. This was the beta of the one currently feeding her information about the southern alliance’s push against her planet in the north. Her gnarled hand picked it up, rolling it gently in her palm.

“Stupid child.” She muttered. The truth was, the child was brilliant, but with no sense of self-preservation. ‘Makes sense’ she thought, just like me. When death only means that you have to towel yourself off and hop in another pod, the part of you that feels finite all but disappears. Dagrun’s grand plan for her young charge’s future was falling apart. Re-connecting to the global community was a tough decision, but if she was going to raise the ISK to put Asbjorn on the path to immortality she had to let someone friendly know about her discovery. Far more valuable then the well known gas deposits on the planet were the minerals tucked just under the soft clay surface of her farm. All she had to do was charge her pod, and send a short message to someone of diplomatic importance and tell them of her discovery. She only hoped she wasn’t too late.

Watching the interstellar news network for the first time in 15 years was jarring. Her implants and skills were now out of date – she couldn’t fly anything better then a frigate, even if she could somehow afford one, and her drone interfacing was far too dated to operate the complex machines of the war. Her body was frail and weak – no tiny nanomachines to keep her beautiful and healthy. It was far too late anyway. She set the EMD drones to work on Asborn’s head and back, building interfacing for implants, making him, at least in body, more like the people she had grown to loathe.

While the drones did the work, she put all her efforts into cutting a deal with the beautiful Gallentien fellow from across the stars.

“War has broken out between the two factions in the pure blind regions…”**STATIC**

“Both sides are reporting heavy capital lossesQUAFE. YOU NEED IT, YOU WANT IT. IN THE WAR AGAINST THIRST THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE VICTOR.”

“Tritanium 1.3456billion, Mexal…’And then the Amarr Priest says… CHECK UNDER MY ROBE!’ (Roaring laughter)”**STATIC**

A sound like machines scraping against each other combined with a horrible, ominous buzzing sound filled Asbjorn’s head. A feeling of dread crept over him, a sense that millions of … something… working together… were trying to get inside his head. A vision of a orange white… hole… appeared before him, with tiny red lights peeking out. Abruptly it faded, and the silvery metal of the small room came into view. Every hair on his body stood on end.

“I’m sorry, it’s going to take a while to adjust the communications channels to the ones you’ll need. The data stream has grown far too complex for the tiny photon co-processor I was forced to use in that implant to handle. We’ll upgrade it soon… i hope” The voice was familiar, but carried a distortion like a digital feed that had too much compression, or when one of his holoreels after it had been banged around in his bag a little too much. It was only when she turned around and began speaking again that Asbjorn realized it was his grandmother.

“I had to replace your inner ear with a acoustics simulator. It’s the kind used in Minmatar battleships. It can ‘Hear’ things which would normally be silent in space…” Dagrun trailed off, small puddles of tears forming under her eyes; “Oh my child; I’m so sorry. No one expected this so soon” She held his hands and began explaining that there had been a discovery of gasses at the base of the volcano. Concord lifted the ban on capuleers to industrialize colonies on worlds, The pod pilots we vying for the planet’s resources and fighting it out in space – Asbjorn soon realized that his grandmother was not getting slower over the last few years… she was DISTRACTED.

“What they don’t realize is that I’ve discovered something far more valuable then they realize, and only I have the locations. But… since we’re not officially part of the colony here, finding someone to buy the information has been… Difficult. I wanted to use the money to send you away from here, away from the war.” Dagrun’s eyes quickly darted to the jars of material locked away in the cabinet on the wall.

“It’s time you made your own fate – I told you to go through the rituals and become a man but you-” The frail old lady was interrupted suddenly. Her eyes darted back and forth at something beyond Asbjorn perception… Her spine stiffened and she gripped his hands ever tighter. A buzzing sound of crosstalk crept it’s way into his mind, tiny chunks of syllables in a language he didn’t understand like a whispering in the centre of his head.

“You’ll want to see this.” She said finally. “Come outside”

The farmer drones were busy picking up chunks of metal debris and dropping them into a container. As the metal hit the bottom, tiny nanomachines would break them down to their atomic basics and were starting to stack them side by side in bars of refined materials.

“What are you building?” Asbjorn asked – still jarred by the sound of his own voice

“Not building, child, repairing” she offered, her distraction was obvious.

As they rounded the side of the house, the young Minmatar stopped dead, mouth agape, at the sight before him.

A enormous blue-steel object, was slowly lowering itself to the surface. Swarms of something… trailing blue flame zipped around the structure. A static buzzing crept into Asbjorn’s head again, not unlike the frightening one hours before… but this one seemed… controlled, subdued.

“What is that sound…” he asked… almost a whisper, under his breath.

“Drones. Hundreds of builder drones”.

Dagrun’s voice jarred Asbjorn out of his shocked stupor. His technology classes explained in great detail the absolutely staggering technology involved in building ONE drone, and was clear to point out that the costs associated with building even one drone was impossible to all but the elite. And there were hundreds of them. Right in front of him.

The thought was cut short as the launching pad collided with the surface of the small planet. The vibrations seemed small at first… but then… something larger roared from beneath their feet. Something uncontrolled. Primal.

The first dark wisps of smoke appeared at the edge of the volcano. They had disturbed it.

“I would never have put that there. Not in a million years.” Dagrun said, almost chuckling, a thin smile on her lips.

Over the following months their plan was laid out. Asbjorn learned about interstellar transport, communications, learning things faster then he ever thought possible. Trade, spaceship command… All the while wondering why he had been denied access to this information before.

Dagrun’s cache of skill manuals was quickly being consumed. Things she had planned for herself that she could no longer use that somehow survived the crash. If Asbjorn knew the value of these books he would likely go wild with greed – Dagrun realized long ago, however, that giving her grandson a chance to live forever was beyond value. Slowly, Asbjorn began to realize the scale of his grandmother’s knowledge, and a deepening respect began to form.

They laid out a plan to get Asbjorn on-board a returning rocket with the first load of material – starting with a job at Lai Dai Cooperation.

Eyjafjallajokull shuddered and burst, throwing smoke far into the sky. Lightning streaked across it’s anvilhead, and thick ash rained down on the new colony below. The forcefields surrounding it glowed a hazy blue every time a dust cloud was blown across it’s surface.

“This is going to hold us up at least a week” Aivira Ogimo said coldly, tapping the metal casing of the implant on the side of her head.

She was not one for appearances. The Caldari woman had opted for expensive implantation in her early years as a pod pilot but couldn’t afford the cosmetics to hide their obvious locations. As she worked her way to production manager in the early days of Lai Dai Cooperation her rough exterior and no-nonsense attitude was further bolstered by her frightening visage. They became her trademark, she couldn’t remove them now.

The new colony at the base of the now erupting volcano was bustling with activity. Workers walking in organized lines down to bunkers to sleep for the night under the watchful guard of the military that followed them everywhere.

“Some locals are trying to join the company, they want access” Her secretary said offhandedly. “Others are warning about the fury of their gods” She giggled. “They say the volcano is a sign that we shouldn’t be here.”

“Whatever.” Aivira remarked coldly. “The original plan was to scorch the people down below. Mostly lost dirty Thukker tribesmen and some Amarr defectors seeking to be free from the empire. I’m not even sure how they got here, they’re not on any official colonization lists that I have access to.”

“You know doing that would have been horrible for diplomatic relations…” The secretary seemed jarred by Aivira’s inhumanity.

“CONCORD does not see much that happens here. Besides, we thought they were Blood Raiders. No matter. Let them in, but offer them HALF what we pay the tube children. Soak the costs in housing, demand that they live in the colony. It’ll cheapen production costs.” Aivira waved her subordinate away with a flick of her wrist, while simultaneously opening eight huge holoreel projections hovering above her glass desk. The image of a military production station rotated slowly, anchored to the first moon of the planet.

Asbjorn felt sick with confusion. The skills to control things he had never seen before felt slotted into his head. Like on the top shelf of an impossibly high cupboard. They were there, and he could access them, but how did he get up there? They didn’t belong. They didn’t make sense. HUNDREDS of camera drones? What exactly is a Jump Drive?! Dagrun knew that cramming the skills into her grandson’s head out of order might be hard on him, but it was all she had. She hoped that she had chosen the correct ones.

Protesters lined the outside of the entrance to the central hub. Many wore masks over their faces to guard against the ashes from the volcano. Red carbon eaters were pulsing rapidly – their tendrils reaching towards the volcano hoping to catch bits of dust raining down on them. They looked hungry.

Asbjorn had a small text window in front of his field vision only he could see now. A gift from grandmother… A way to communicate once he was inside the complex. A small group of Minmatar youth was camped off to his left watching and commenting on the people signing up to join the Caldari.

‘Oh no…’ Asbjorn thought as he passed by. ‘they’re in my class.’

“Hey Thukker!” a heavyset tattooed boy shouted. “What are you doing?! They’ll work you to death, and you’re going to piss the ‘cano off. Better to stay out ‘ere, don’t you think?” He seemed angry.

“Where’s your ‘Matar pride?!” Another scoffed, as he picked up a chunk of scrap metal.

–A gray overview snapped into place-

The chunk of metal flew towards Asbjorn. In one swift motion he grabbed the heavy chunk of bulkhead, using it’s momentum, spun and flung it back at the boy. It collided with his chest flatly.

–The trajectory and speed of the hunk of metal was reported in his field of view-

His new implant could hear a wet thudding with the sound of a rib cracking in more then one place.

“SHIT!!” The first boy shouted.

Asbjorn ran quickly while the youth tended to their fallen friend to the line of people signing up to join the mining operations, shoving several out of the way in the process. He thought the text: “What did you do to me?!” into the console, to which Dagrun replied: “Your perception and awareness has been increased tenfold. You’ll need it where you’re going”

Dagrun felt out of place with most of the damaged pod’s connections in place, but without the warm fluid surrounding her. She had placed a simple wooden stool in the middle of it’s open face: A interesting contrast to the hyper-advanced system she was accessing. The deal with Megnyve Charis was done. Get the materials locations and blueprints she had created in her long stay on the planet, and her Grandson would be guaranteed entry into The Republic University with a transfer to the University of Caille and safe passage into empire. It was up to Asbjorn now. Locked away inside his head was everything he needed.

Asbjorn quickly found his way into a job in the the chemical reactions department of the Caldari hub. With his new skills and new Caldari Citizenship he was soon free to wander the departments as he wanted.

It almost felt good to belong to something, but every time he looked at himself in a mirror he was reminded of the boy he hurt outside. The stars no longer gave him comfort, just cold fear. The smoke from the factory and the volcano was starting to take it’s tole on the environment outside, the stars were harder to see and the trees were withering. A thin line of lava now snaked down the volcano, towards the launch hub. The workers whispered about how long Aivira would keep production going.

Dagrun 0:23>“I need you to find out the launch date”

The private chat window suddenly snapped into view.

Asbjorn 0:23>“Grandmother! I was beginning to worry!”

Dagrun 0:24>”Don’t worry about me. Listen, the R&D department should have codebreaker modals in storage. They use them to reverse engineer some… things. I need you to grab one and see if you can discover the first rocket date.”

Asbjorn 0:25>“I’ll try.” Asbjorn closed the window, and headed to the corporate hanger array.

There were two rough Caldari Navy Midshipmen standing outside the hanger doors. They were talking in hushed tones about someone named Fatal.

“What are your orders here?” One barked at Asbjorn.

“Research on drone propulsion chemicals” He lied.

“You’re a bit young aren’t you?” The solder poked Asbjorn in the chest with the butt of his rifle.

“Graduated at the top of my class!” He lied again.

“You’re Minmatar too. I don’t know…”

The private chat window blinked feverishly at the bottom of Asbjorn’s field of vision.

Megnyve>“TELL THEM YOU OVERHEARD THEM TALKING ABOUT FATAL.”

Asbjorn didn’t have time to ask Dagrun who Megnyve was.

“Listen, let me in and I won’t tell Aivira Ogimo you guys were talking about Fatal” he said in the toughest voice he could muster. Even at 15 years of age, his Minmatar heritage granted him a measure of height over the burly soldiers.

The second officer grabbed the first by the belt and pulled him off into the corner.

Even though the two were whispering, Dagrun’s implant heard everything:

“If the Rabbit finds out about this we’re dead. Worse, he’ll lock us up on a rock somewhere in deadspace forever. Do you wanna end up in a bloodsport arena? Let the fucking twerp through”

“Five minutes!” The second officer barked.

Asbjorn nodded and ducked in.

—

Asbjorn 2:54> TWO HOURS

Dagrun 2:54> What?!

Asbjorn 2:55> They launch in two hours. The volcano is predicted to explode in three. They don’t care about the people below, they’re going to leave the station here and bring down the shields.

Dagrun 2:56> you have to get out of there. Find a way onto the rocket.

Asbjorn 2:57> I can’t leave all these people! They’re innocent! What about you??

Dagrun 2:57> There’s no way to save us.

Rage boiled inside the young tribesmen. He punched the screen, his fist harmlessly passing through the holographic projection in front of him. The projection winked out for a second before flickering back into view showing a rapidly declining rocket countdown. ‘There has to be something else here’ he thought.

Asbjorn flicked through station logs, corporate wallets. Billions of isk moving from place to place. Corporation hangers… “Wait… What is that?” Nestled in a hanger marked “READ ONLY” was something called “Aivira Ogimo’s Rhea” A statistics readout popped up beside entry along with a progress bar indicating “pilot requirements met”. Whatever it was, it was big, and important, and new. ‘They wouldn’t leave something like this behind’.

He ran towards the hanger.

So early in the morning, most of the colony was sleeping. Asbjorn ran from hallway to lift to hallway, heading towards the corporation hanger array. The young man’s mind was swimming with fear and anger.

Strangely, the two navy midshipmen were nowhere to be found, when he reached the locked gateway. Fighting to pull his codebreaker module out of his white labcoat pocket he punched code after code into the gateway. With a snapping series of clicks, the doors opened, and he saw something he’ll never forget.

Huge

was the only word to describe the Jump Freighter hovering over the repair platform. The ship was so large he couldn’t see the end of it in his field of vision. The ship seemed to warp around the curvature of the planet closing at a point some hundreds of metres away. Shaped like a giant slab, tiny armor repair drones buzzed and walked all over the surface of the freighter, preparing it for launch.

Asbjorn 3:30> What do I do?

The person who responded was not who he expected.

Megnyve 3:31> Look to your left. There should be a row of doors.

Asbjorn heard voices from the hallway. He didn’t stop to think, rushing along the gangplank a series of white metal doors marked with hanger numbers came into view. One was lit. He rushed to it and it opened automatically. He ducked inside and was grabbed by the metal hands of a preparation drone.

Aivira Ogimo walked swiftly to the hanger. If she was going to get the first shipment on time she had to get into space now. Her secretary followed close behind, flipping through space bookmarks and plotting routes to the proper orbit to pickup the materials can, all the while uploading them to the Rhea’s computer as vouchers.

“And what about the colony?” she curtly asked.

“I’ve received intel that we’ve been compromised by Guristas pirates. I’ll use them as a scapegoat when the hub goes critical. Everyone will blame the pirates and we’ll come back later to mop up.” Aivira rushed to the undock platform and reached her hanger bay.

The light on the rhea’s pod access door was red and flashing.

Aivira’s face flushed red with anger and fear. “What the fuck is going on?! Get this fixed. NOW!”

Asbjorn struggled slightly confined in the tight connection port implantation chamber. The tiny nanomachines had bored holes into his nervous system and was putting the finishing touches on the series of plugs in his back. With a short buzz, the straps holding him to the table lifted, and pushed him out into plain blue steel room. Before him was a platform, surrounded with a pod. It looked exactly like the one in Dagrun’s room. Realization swept over him.

A pod blasted out of the array and into the waiting port of the Rhea. Systems information flashed before his eyes. There was a jump drive on this thing. He somehow knew what that meant.

Someone had tipped the colonists off. A growing group of angry people were outside the station doors being held back by a larger group of Caldari Solders. Asbjorn could hear them shouting. He could “feel” the drones walking about the surface of the Rhea. He felt like a giant… but he couldn’t understand half of what he was controlling. Bays would open and close randomly. A warm, mechnical female voice spoke to him softly. “There is not enough power” “There is already something in that location” Asbjorn was frustrated.

“Ow!” A tiny prick, like a beesting struck Asbjorn somewhere… below. The soldiers were firing warning shots. The crowd below was getting rowdy. “OPEN THE CARGO HOLD. LET US GET OUT WITH YOU!” a man was shouting. “HAVE SOME COMPASSION!” A woman shreaked. Asbjorn could see almost everywhere at once. Camera drones.

Asbjorn grouped a bunch of the tiny drones together, and, with a thought, swept them into the soldiers as fast as they could go. The drones smashed into their bodies, flinging them like a great hand sweeping away ants. The power was sickening. Every now and then a drone would break on someone’s helmet, against his chest, or against a wall, leaving a still image of a face in horror before the image winked out. Terrified, groups of colonists huddled together. His communications window flashed. Rows and rows of data were flying into Asbjorns head. Concentrating, he managed to make out a few lines.

Corporation:

Aivira O> Someone is in my Rhea. What kind of sick joke are you trying to play?!

Raustilo Nesenoilen> No indication of fowl play yet, it was someone belonging to the caldari state. Whoever it is will have to undock and get into space before we can deal with them. The callsign is coming up garbled. Something’s weird with his implants.

Local:

Rustbucket> There’s about 40 Dread Guristas battleships two jumps out, you guys might wanna get safe.

Private Chat – Dagrun, Megnyve:

Megnyve> I’m not sure how he’s inside the JF, but he is.

Dagrun> Asbjorn! IF YOU CAN READ THIS, FEEL FOR THE CARGO BAY. GRAB THE CIVILIANS!

Asbjorn concentrated. Cargo. Cargo. Cargo. He could feel the hot station air wafting into an empty … stomach. There was no other way to describe it.

The colonists began you shout “It’s opening!” Asbjorn could feel the feet of hundreds of people filling the cargo hold of the mighty jump freighter.

3, 2, 1… LAUNCH. The entire station shook down to it’s foundation. Aivira found herself on the floor of the gangplank, climbing to the first lit pod bay. Behind it was a Caldari Shuttle, and salvation.

A rocket lifted itself over the station and out of sight, a trail of spent fuel in it’s wake. The sun was raising to shine down on planet, rays of light peeking through the smoke of the rumbling volcano.

Asbjorn could hear the fear of the people inside the ship. They were running to stations now, peering out windows, running to observation decks. “Time to go!” Was the frantic thought in his head.

The ship groaned and didn’t move.

Asbjorn> What do I do!?

Dagrun> He can’t fly the ship! He’s never been in a pod before! You’re going to get him killed Megnyve!

Megnyve> You’re the one who said he was ready! What kind of pilot are you, anyway Asbjorn?

Asbjorn> I’m NO KIND OF PILOT. I’m not even sure what you mean!

Dagrun> Child. There is one thing on that Freighter you can operate. You’re running out of time. Hit the jump drive and set it to a random location nearby. The university’s pilots will pick you up when you’re safe.

Asbjorn> The volcano is erupting. You’re going to die.

Dagrun> We all die.

Dagrun sighed and slumped over her stool. The drones were buzzing away on her pod but were only 1/3 of the way completed. She wondered what parts worked and what didn’t. The debris was a lucky find for the old pilot’s drones, but too little too late. There was still a huge hole in the outer structures, and even if that was fixed, she had no fluid. With no clone and no way to get off the planet, this death would be final.

Dagrun turned her attention to her grandson and the hundreds of innocent people in it’s hold. At least she could save them.

Dagrun> Turn on the jump drive. Go.

Asbjorn> Where will I end up?

Dagrun> Far away from here. It’ll be safer, I hope. The communications systems will still work once you’re out there, but you have to go fast.

Asbjorn, timidly felt in his mind for the “switch”. The stars laid out before him, in glorious detail. Planets wizzed around them. Jump gates blinked and were marked clearly. Overwhelmed, the student pressed a random spot in space and closed his eyes.

1111111010101001000000000000000000000111111111111111111111111111111111111111111!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The screaming sound of thousands of drones turn their attention to the huge object occupying their space. Asbjorn opens his eyes. The roar of his engines nearly deafens him, and the screeching of drones is blasting in his ears. He can hear the people on the observation decks screaming. “Rogues! WHAT IS SHE DOING?!

‘they must still think I’m Avira’

Red flashes fill his field of vision. ‘I’ve heard this sound before’

Bits of the station hanger float about in space with the Rhea, along with the bodies of several soldiers. The jump drive took bits of the things around him with him

Doing the only thing he knew how, he pressed the button in his mind again, picked a random location in space, and closed his eyes.

Without anyone on deck to operate it the Hub’s protective field falters and drops. The seismic disruptions from the launch and a jump drive going off next door pushed the volcano over the edge. Great plumes of lava rain down on the station, it’s reactors heating to supercritical levels.

Dagrun stands outside her home, watching as the building in the distance takes the full force of the planet’s fury. Her small army of drones carry on working on the ruined pod. Tiny bursts of light begin to appear at the refinery’s upper decks, and, with a crack, the structure explodes. Radiation and heat wash over the planes.

Inside the ruined pod, a red light flashes towards Dagrun as the shockwave crushes everyone, and everything in it’s path.

Asbjorn opens his eyes. He’s being toed into a station. The trauma of the day must have caused him to black out. There are ships everywhere. A sign reads “Welcome to Jita”. Hundreds of people inside the damaged Rhea are cheering.

Somewhere in Matar a beautiful woman opens her eyes. Pain, searing pain in the back of her skull. Wet, naked… a woman in a labcoat is here and tapping a clipboard.

“What… Wait…”

“Dagrun Thukker. I’ve taken the liberty of following your training program to it’s completion since you fell off the grid. I have a list of the completed skills. I’ve upgraded your clone over the years. I’m not sure what the Republic had you doing, but the previous model was lost. I only got enough information to transfer your thoughts, not your current appearance, So I had to go with old data and even that seems to be somewhat incomplete. The data was all garbled. I’m not sure I understand why “Farming drone operations” Is in here, but no matter. There’s a fully fitted Reaper in the hanger array. Enjoy your afterlife.”