By Alan Richard
Modified for EVE Online by Roc Wieler

Ah crap, I’m in trouble this time.

Jowal whined something well above my hearing range.

“I’m kinda busy right now,” I said.

Jowal dialed her frequency back to something a little less likely to crack glass and tried again. “They’re shooting at us.”

“Not a lot I can do about that now,” I yelled, flailing towards the console.  I lunged at the knob that diverts all energy to the rear deflector shields.

The escape pod launched.

“Dammit.”

“They’ve just vaporized the escape pod.”

“I can see that, Jowal. Where the hell is Enop?”

“She’s down in the galley.”

Something hit us — hard.

“Don’t tell me she’s been listening?” I said.

Jowal nodded.

“That’s just great,” I shouted, slamming my fist into the console, “we’re giving this up now before they blow us out of the sky.”

Jowal squealed something. I backed off the thrusters and sagged into my seat.  I’m not a pilot, never have been. The cold grey of the patrol cruiser filled the monitor.

***

We stood before the Minmatar commander.  My reflection danced off the oddly angled panels of his uniform. It was vaguely hypnotic.

He’d sent his grunts in first. They’d rounded us up — a bit more vigorously than was strictly necessary — but we had tried to outrun him, so I couldn’t really complain.  One appeared behind him and whispered something in their primitive tongue. I didn’t catch it.

Turning to us, he switched to Trade Common.

“I hate smugglers.”

I didn’t protest this. He was right, after all.

Enop swayed beside me. Being Gallente, I was fairly sure she’d be right. She slammed to the ground, hard. Guess not. The commander rounded on me.

“Your friend seems to have a bit of a problem, I think she likes to listen to things, bad things, illegal things.”

On cue, one of his grunts produced the disk.

“What is this?” asked the captain with enough exaggerated theatre to fill the gravity well of a small planet.

“We believe it to be a terran storage device, sir,” said the grunt.

“And what — exactly — does it store?”

“By the state of her —” the guard waved dismissively at Enop’s prostrate, giggling figure, ” — I’d guess music, sir.”

“Analyze it. Now.”

As the grunt scurried away, the commander’s eyes lit on me. “I know you’ve been to Sovicou, Jayen. I know that you and these two filthy Gallente are responsible for half the pirated music that’s destroying this region of space, and when I find it, rest assured that you are going to rot.”

I’m screwed.

***

Two days later they released me.  Enop’s ship was impounded and destroyed. She was sentenced to a year in the brig for possession of a small amount of audio altering substance.  They didn’t find the cargo.

***

Years later, I ran into Jowal on a frontier moon. We reminisced about the old days.  Apparently Enop died shortly after her release. She’d loaded enough music to lobotomize an infantry division into an escape pod, and launched herself towards a passing comet.