– by Ethan Bellator

It was a simple contract, believe it or not. We were contracted by some capsuleer’s handler to go live on and work at some planet on the edges of Empire space. No real problems, we figured. My family and I, me being the eldest son of a single mother now managing three kids, were ready to make a better living. This job managed to pay nicely, at least my part did. I was around twenty, struggling from bar-to-bar playing a little song now and then to get a few credits to bring to Mom so we could make it through another week. This contract promised us something that we’d never been promised before, and we leaped on it.

ISK. Cold, hard, ISK.

The money of the demigods.

We took that ISK, which added up to way more than enough to pay for a nice home and to get me to a school that would get me a job. Hell, with this kind of paycheck maybe becoming a pod-pilot wasn’t such a bad idea?

Well, now that things have been so warm and fuzzy, I’ve decided I’ll stay. Why would I follow my silly ambitions?

No.

I’m lying through my teeth right now.

It isn’t that I don’t want to leave, it’s that we can’t. The planet we live in resides in a hot-bed of tension and brutality. Every day, our supply-lines run the risk of getting slaughtered in a cross-fire. At night, the fighting is pretty and has even let me get lucky with a very cute young lady, but deceptively so. The ‘shooting stars’ over the sky are nothing like the things I grew up dreaming of seeing.

People are fighting over this planet, desperately badgering one another in whatever form they can imagine. Why? I don’t know. There have been so many colonies shot up around here, the planet’s been sucked dry so fast. These pod-pilots are voracious: it turns out the pilot who signed us to jump down here was the first of thousands to jump on an opportunity of free ISK. Some pretty large names are dropping colonies on the most remote planets in the darkest holes of space. I’ve heard rumors that the big-wigs are throwing around colonies like crazy. Almost like every colony they get ready to drop down is a fresh syringe just filled with a new dose of narcotics, and every planet is another vein in which to inject it; ISK is the ‘high of highs.’

What I don’t understand, though, is that the pilots have no presence here. Asides from making it so that we need to make drills on how to react should one of those massive capital ships not burn up in the atmosphere somehow and crash into the surface, there is nothing here tying them to us. The only reason we didn’t up and leave after we had banked enough ISK to live forever in the upper echelon of the middle-class, was because the last group that tried to leave never left the gravity well. A stray hybrid round slammed into the side of the dropship they were flying, and it fell back to this damned rock as ash and fire.

These pod-pilots will be the death of the common man, it seems. I see the atrocities they create first-hand now. Sure, I understand the whole concept of capitalism, and I understand why they do these things. However, that doesn’t mean I have to agree with them. But, a twenty-something kid’s gotta eat too, and I need to feed my siblings and make sure my mom doesn’t die of stress. And there’s been talk of some kind of weird super-soldier being made. I don’t get the whole lot of it, but these guys are supposed to be the best of the best. The pod-pilots are going to use those to control a planet, like a private army, but more capable. I like this idea, actually.

They told me, growing up, I’d never get anywhere with my life.

Well, now I’m mining on some desolate rock. I got off the rock I was born on, and due to hearing of the news with these new super-soldiers, I have learned how to fire a weapon with confidence that it’s going to hit the target. Also, I am a strong and capable kid. I can build, but without any effort I can also destroy. Screw being an immortal: one shouldn’t fear a man who laughs at Death as they avoid him. No, they should avoid a man who does so without fear. One who laughs at Death without remorse, and without a guaranteed way to avoid him.

A man who laughs at death, knowing that he is still vulnerable. I am a man who does just that, as the days drag on. It’s come to the point where I know I’ll die on this rock. So, what I’m going to do, is I’m going to sign up to be this super-soldier. I’ll fight for my family, so that they can work and keep their paycheck and live with some comfort. But, I don’t plan on living for too long, as I’ve already given up and been broken. No boot camp necessary. I am ready to die, and sure as Hell able to kill another man.

Screw the immortals in the skies that throw lightning at each other.

I am what all men should fear: a mortal not fearful of death.