Clear sky, natural Vitamin D, ice-cold smoking drinks, the cry of the raptors overhead... Just the thing a corporation officer needs to to forget the daily worries of a space corporation.
But the call of space is in a capsuleer’s blood, and soon the universe found me walking the corridors of our home station again. There was mail, of course, and bills, and all other minutiae, but it all paled against the feeling of a red giant’s hard radiation on your ship’s hull, and the endless darkness of space.
I was catching up with mail of the day, making note of the one or other event I needed to talk with my corp mates about, when I heard the door to the apartment cycle. A heavy ‘clunk’, the sound of boots discarded with force, and soon I had a curious Ni-Kunni peeking over my shoulder.
“What’cha doing, sis?” Eta glanced at my screen, and grimaced. “Ew, paperwork.”
“Yep,” I answered, finishing the note I was working on. “And what are you doing here - I thought you were inseparable from your reactors?”
“Well, yeah,” she pulled a chair close and made herself comfortable. “Everyone needs a break once in a while. Relax, chill, have fun, you know?”
“Hmmm...,” I frowned. “I don’t know what you consider ‘chilling’, but CONCORD considered it aggressive actions.”
“Aggressive.. oh, that!”
“Mind telling me, or do I have to cut your Quafe ration?”
“Well...”, she tried looking bashful, but not very convincingly. “You know the lo-sec system next to here?
”Last week, when we had this 20-hour wardec going on, I noticed this moon next door, empty and for the taking. Of course with the wardec I couldn’t do much, and when the war ended, some small corp had anchored a small tower there.
“So I shot it a bit.”
Eta shooting something...that meant “Your mission Drake?” She nodded happily.
“And what happened after the tower guns reduced your Drake to scrap metal?”
“It went into re-inforce.”
“It ... what?!” An dreadful feeling overcame me. “You weren’t alone, right? The General was there as well, with his Dreads, right?”
“And Ran, and the Grav guys!” she bursted out. “It took only 40 minutes. And Grav’ has popped somebody else’s tower already a week ago, to make space for their own!”
Leaning back, I idly toyed with an electric pen. “And now what?”
“Well, the tower is out of RI now, and the General says, this would be a great opportunity to anchor our own POS. Planting a tree, or something like that.”
I mustered my little sister - I had never seen her that blood-thirsty. The radiation of her reactors must have gotten to her.
Yet the idea was now planted in my brain, arguing against my natural carefulness - and quite successfully. A permanent presence in the lo-sec next door... a place and reason for the alliance to rally around.
“You know that a 0-sec corp is drawing rent from that very system, right?”, I asked.
“Yep.”
“And that they won’t like us planting towers there?”
“Yep.”
“And that they could wipe us out in a week if they put not even half a mind to it?”
“Yep.” Eta was grinning wildly.
I swiveled in my chair, and then threw the pen into a corner.
"Oh damn it - let's go!"
