“Best I can do, mate; and even two days isn’t guaranteed.”

I grumbled to myself. My newly acquired ships, the Dramiel frigate and the Cynabal cruiser apparently weren’t sustainable with their current fittings. It looked as though I had been scammed once again. Jared Feint had disappeared off the grid with quite a decent chunk of my ISK. I wasn’t surprised really. I just liked to think I had grown smarter since the last time I was scammed (editor’s note: Fleet Issue Stabber).

I had managed to find me a somewhat reputable mechanic in nullsec who told me the ships weren’t a lost cause. He proposed some drastic changes to them, but in the end guaranteed I’d have fully functional ships that might even surprise me with their performance, should his intended modifications work out.

Really, I didn’t have a choice. And of course, the proposed changes weren’t going to be cheap.

As we flipped through pages of schematic modifications, I was impressed with the ingenuity of this mechanic. He had some radically aggressive ideas: increased drone bays, overcharged collision accelerators to increase damage output, and high sync velocity muzzles for increased volley damage to name but a few. There were some tradeoffs of course: decreased weapon hard points and slower rate of fire to name but two.

“Wait, what was that?” I asked as he flipped through a diagram. “Was that a Republic Fleet Firetail?”

“Yeah, haven’t seen one out this way in years. Was just a few ideas I had for how to improve them.” the mechanic replied.

“Add that to the list. If your changes work, I’ll buy that schematic as well. I have a few Firetails back home.” If his changes did in fact take, having a modified Republic Fleet Firetail could only be a good thing.

“Alright,” he said. “We’ll get started. Like I said, it’s going to take a minimum of two days, and you’re paying labour costs by the hour.”

He extended his hand, and I shook it firmly with my own. We had a deal.

All that was left was for me to figure out was what I was going to do for the following two days on a nullsec pirate station. Hmm, maybe I could find a poker table.