Two Birds and a Shotgun

        "Bolt actions speak louder than words." -- Doc Nickel

For a moment, the world spun around me, and I sought purchase at the open hatch to my pod. The last days had been … interesting. And tiring. Unless I was counting wrong, I had flown more sorties in the last four weeks than in the four months before that - and I was one of the lesser active pilots in the alliance at that time even!

These last two days had begun, harmlessly enough, with a Survival Seminar, offered as free service to all the new pilots which had recently joined our alliance. Initially I had paid only superficial attention, since the exercises were in high-sec and about things I already knew. But soon enough the group ventured into null-sec, allowing me to join, and then things got interesting. And for once, our so far impressive pod-extraction record took a ding, as our pods were picked off here and there.

I expected it to end there, but Greygal had other ideas.

[ While we’re pretty much done here, I have received word that APOC is doing a structure shoot somewhat away from here. It would be a good idea to help them, especially since they helped us in our recent diplomatic … issues. Any takers? ]

And of course there were takers! Given our fleet members, we wouldn’t be able to provide large DPS - but stealth bombers are not to be sneezed at. So we began the long trek to Gyerzen, hoping that we would arrive in time to at least do some token damage to that POS.

And damage we did! And since we were there, we went on to help APOC in reinforcing a POCO in the same system as well.

And because we had reinforced it, why not stay around a little bit longer to finish it off?

And thus, bit by bit, a short trip to provide some firepower turned into a two-day engagement.

Luckily Eta had been gracious enough to ferry one of my old structure-shoot battleships to the target system, but even with the more sustained firepower of my sentry Dominix, it made for a long day. In fact, I didn’t remember the last time I had a proper night’s rest.

No wonder I was woozy.

Carefully, I opened my eyes, and found that the world had decided to finally settle down in a definitive place. Letting go of my pod, I walked towards the bunk in my Captain’s Quarters, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to make my way to my actual quarters on this station at that point.

But as I carefully took my steps towards relaxation, an unbidden thought rose in my mind: while all the recent sorties had been important, and exciting, and in certain ways influential, they were also blurring together. I used to be able to recall sorties by singular fights I engaged in - but not anymore.

Maybe it was just me growing up, looking at the bigger picture - but suddenly I couldn’t help feeling that I was losing something important.

And I was missing it.