Occupational Hazards

The cold air in the hangar had cooled me out more than I had thought - I was still slightly shivering even after I had put on my snazzy station outfit. Nothing a hot cup of tea wouldn’t be able to fix! Coming out the kitchen, cup in hand, an image on the wall-mounted video screen caught my eye: the cycling feed from my the security cameras, currently showing one of my storage bays, filled with rows upon rows of cryostatic pods.

Cryopods were how baseliners often travelled the big void, passing the time asleep. You could often find them in the wrecks of ships, lucky survivors in the harshness of space. For us capsuleers, they were mere trade goods, if that much.

These, however, were special. The official manifest listed them as unspecified “Livestock” - but I knew their actual contents.

The big ones - Slavers. The small ones - Slaver Hounds.

I hated them.

Just because slavery was part of my culture, it didn’t mean that I necessarily agreed with it. Or disagreed. Culture is never that easy. Personally I didn’t think it was worth the trouble.

But slavers themselves? Hated them. Where the actions of us capsuleers were mitigated by the fact that our opponents were immortal demi-gods themselves, these creatures took too much delight from the fact that their victims were very much mortal.

And they had the enforcers of the Theology Council behind them. And the Council had its ways and methods with dissenters, capsuleer or not.

So every time I undocked in a new ship, I loaded up a Slaver and its Hound, hooked up the slaver’s pod to a sensor feed, and initiated the reanimation procedure. Nobody wondered, nobody questioned - just another Amarrian doing her thing. By the time I arrived on the battlefield, my guest would be awake, kept alive by their metal coffin for a couple more days, even if only barely.

My ships didn’t last days. And when the inevitable end came, my guest had a front row seat - and nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.

The lucky ones would vanquish together with my ship. Just another unfortunate victim of the war.

        Xyon Xero > WTF! *laugh*

        Xyon Xero > Slaver, Slaver Hound

        Xyon Xero > Haha, so Amarrian, I love it!

Not all got lucky.