(My first attempt at Eve fiction- please be gentle!)

Odinesyn stargate – Gererique – Solitude

Ensign Rene Bredoteaux yawned and stretched at his console. He was mid-way through a, frankly boring, shift on the Alpha watch. He briefly pondered as to why he wanted to become a traffic controller on a stargate in the first place, but it was easy work, reasonably well paid and…

“This is Federal Freighter Indigenous requesting jump to Odinesyn.” The robotic announcement in his earpiece jerked him out of his reverie, and he saw that a freighter has come out of warp near the stargate while he was wrapped up in his thoughts.

“Stand by, Indigenous” he replied, although he knew it was an autopilot he was talking to, and therefore needn’t have bothered. He quickly ran a scan on the ship to check for electronic discharge to indicate recent combat (“on a freighter, yeah right” he thought), came up blank.

“You are clear to jump Indigenous, have a nice day” he said automatically and entered today’s code. The stargate’s wormhole generators started charging and the background hum perceptibly increased in volume. Electromagnetic tendrils reached out to the freighter, enveloped it and…nothing.

“What the hell?” Rene muttered to himself, peering at the freighter. It should’ve gone, whisked into the wormhole that was established. He quickly double checked the wormhole status- it was green… but wait, there were serious power spikes. His hand moved to open the protective cover on the ‘abort wormhole’ button, but the freighter winked out of existence. He had a bad feeling about this. He powered down the wormhole in the usual fashion, and it responded as normal.

Opening a secure communication channel with his opposite number in Odinesyn took a few moments, given the vast distance.

“Hey Rene, what’s up?” came the cheery tone of Ensign Angela Laurent, traffic controller on the Odinesyn/ Gererique gate in Odinesyn.

“Oh hi Angela. Erm, this is going to sound like a stupid question, but has a Fed Freighter, Indigenous, come through OK?”

“Yes hon, just arrived. Funny you should ask though, it landed 320km away from our gate. Very odd, the captain was very angry- I just got through speaking with him. Why do you ask?” she queried

“Oh, probably nothing, I just…. Never mind, it’s OK. Weird how it landed so far from you, huh?” he didn’t want to look like a worried idiot in front of her, but something was wrong

“Yeah, but now and again these things happen I am sure. Gotta go Rene, my shift officer is coming.” She clicked off, leaving Rene with static.

Hmm. He didn’t want to bother his own shift officer, who was an idiot and had got the job through his father’s well placed connections. He wouldn’t take responsibility for anything, nor have any advice to offer.

Rene sighed inwardly, he wasn’t paid enough for this. The next jump was a Ishkur class Assault Frigate, and it went through fine. No delays, no problems. Rene started to relax. Maybe it was just a blip like Angela said.

Onboard Myrmidon class Battlecruiser First Strike – Gererique – Solitude

Daniel Roux was very pleased. He had just bought and equipped his first Battlecruiser, a Myrmidon class. A fine piece of Gallente engineering, he had spent almost all of his ISK on this beauty, and was taking it out for it’s maiden voyage.

He glided out of the FedNavy Testing Facilities station, and aligned the First Strike for the only stargate in the system. He engaged warp, and ran system checks while in warp- all looking good. Excellent!

He dropped out of warp perfectly, ending up right next to the Odinesyn gate.

“This is the First Strike, requesting jump to Odinesyn” he vocalised to the stargate

“Stand by First Strike” came the prompt reply

“You are clear to jump, have a nice day” after a moment or two.

The operator sounded a bit edgy, Daniel thought, as he waited for the usual gate charge to fling him headlong into the depths. His ship was enveloped in electromagnetics and then….. nothing. What?

Starting to panic inside, Daniel was made aware of some very strange ship readings on his HUD. Powergrid was starting to overload, shields were draining, the ship was having a hard time of this.

“Ah, Odinesyn gate?” he transmitted. No reply. “Odines- “ ….

<BOOM>

The First Strike shook, shuddered and rolled. Muted “woop woop” noises went off in his ear as warning systems sounded. His HUD suddenly cleared and he was still in space but … not in Odinesyn, or Gererique for that matter. He quickly manipulated ships systems, engineering systems, life support systems, juggling frantically to bring some semblance of order to the borderline out of control Battlecruiser. His crew reported minor casualties, but nothing serious.

Phew. He now had time to take stock of his surroundings…. And it wasn’t good. He could see two yellow suns, and to his knowledge, no system in New Eden had two suns. A huge planet was near, within an AU. More pressingly was a oddly shaped space station about 200km away- not as big as the one he had just left, but it had a weird pulsing ‘thing’ attached to it. Like a funnel almost. Pointing at him.

He gawped. Then gawped at his overview, and gawped again as it showed two small ships emerge from the station. His overview showed no ship type, ship name or anything about the ships, other than their distance and speed. Their speed….His mouth went dry. They were approaching at 40km/s? Surely not? Before he had time to react, they were on him, and his HUD showed they had locked him. He reacted instinctively, locking them back. They opened fire, with what looked like lasers, while orbiting him tightly at 6000m.

He quickly engaged his single webifier on one of the attackers, praying it would do something- there’s no way his blasters could track them at the speed they were doing, and launched his Hammerhead drones. A huge explosion rocked the Myrmidon as the webbed ship just exploded as soon as the webifier took effect. The explosion had wiped out his drones, scattering them in flames, their guidance systems shattered.

His shields were failing. For small ships they sure packed a punch. He waited for what seemed like an eternity for the webifier to cycle off, and was about to engage the second ship with it, when a massive blast emanated from the station and tore across the void toward the First Strike. His shields popped, his armour briefly withstood the blast, then turned white hot and melted. The structure may as well have been made from paper, it tore apart and vented gases, debris and crew members out into space. The dying ship enacted one last task before it exploded- to eject the pod. Must save the pod. It’s job done, it surrendered to the cataclysm.

Onboard the Research Station Purity of Thought – K’Shille system – M’Stak quadrant

Research Master H’Ran peered at his Junior Research Officer T’Pred, sat before him in H’Ran’s office.

“Report please T’Pred. Tell me why you saw fit to destroy the enemy ship? The biggest enemy ship we have managed to intercept so far?”

“Sir- the wormhole test was a great success, we think we know how to intercept their ships every time now. We had to destroy him as he had some kind of super-weapon that destroys our ships in one blow. We have interrogated the pilot- they seem to control the ship from some kind of small capsule. Unfortunately, we don’t understand their physiology properly yet, so he died, but not before he told us that his ship was the largest they had and that only a few had their super-weapon- which he called a Webber” T’Pred tailed off and looked at the floor, not sure what to expect from his volatile superior

“Hmm.” H’Ran ruminated. “They don’t know about us, do they? How big is their empire?”

“No sir, they have no idea. According to the pilots we have interrogated so far, they aren’t a very big empire” T’Pred responded

H’Ran waved it away. “His excellency will be most pleased with our findings. An invasion fleet is on standby- are you able to create a stable wormhole for us to egress through?”

“Yes sir, that should be no problem. We will emerge where we snatched their ship from. Sir, unfortunately, we couldn’t salvage the Webber super-weapon, it was too badly damaged to see how it works” T’Pred again waited for the explosion of temper

None came, H’Ran seemed to be in an excellent mood. He waved his hand in a dismissive gesture “Don’t worry about that, with only a few of their ships having them, I can’t see a problem. We have to expect a few losses. Good work T’Pred, this will be a quick and glorious victory for the Ms’chudge Empire. Dismissed.”

~ by ombeve on September 22, 2008.