Rettic’s Log: Incendia Astrum
A chorus of sirens drummed through the corridors of the space station, interrupted by the occasional thunder of another missile breach on its exterior. Rettic sat in a room overlooking one of PAX Incendia Astrum’s many hangars, watching through a fogged green plate window as ships departed by the dozens. The room itself, however, was muffled to near silence.
“You ‘ought to be getting out of here, you know,” spoke the rusty voice of an old Udorian man hunched behind a counter on the other side of the room. Rettic turned to look at the walls of the old consignment shop adorned in planetside relics—old ship scraps, hand-drawn maps charting years-past anomalies of the D-GTMI system, cracked wooden slabs and rock mineral souvenirs of failed planet terraforming attempts—all the keepings of a retired ‘dust merc’.
Rettic wiped the dirt film from a glass bottle, revealing the hull of a toy model Archon carefully preserved inside.
“Goddamn political mess,” said the old man, seemingly talking to himself now. “The ‘powers that be’ get another religious hard-on for expansion and decide to throw a few rocks at the hive in my back yard. And we get the surprise when here come the liberators, comin’ to free their slaves from from Amarrian oppression…”
He either laughed or coughed. Rettic couldn’t tell.
“Misdirected aggression all around,” the old man continued as he lifted his head. “I supposed these U’kies are in for a treat when there ain’t hardly no slave types to liberate in a goddamned Paxton Federation settlement.”
“I gotta say,” Rettic interjected, “I like you better when you aren’t in such a good mood, Sam.”
“Well,” he smiled, “What can I say? It must be the weather.”
A deep clap sounded through the stone-metal walls and ripped through the room, knocking over glass blown lamps and cutting the power from a neon “Samuel’s Found Goods” sign hanging over the counter.
“God—summabitch—” Sam scrambled to keep hold of the tools in his hands and shielded his work area with his arms. His cigar remained balanced at the end of his lips. “Rettic, son, looks like you may get a good discount this time.”
“My offer still stands, Sam,” Rettic spoke with calm sincerity. “You don’t have to stay here.”
“But I gotta stay for the party, Rettic. It’s been too long since I’ve seen fireworks like this.” Sam joked, “Besides, haven’t you heard enough of my ramblings? If I talk a capsuleer’s ear off while he’s steering a ship like I do yours every other day here, I’m gonna get us killed faster than these U’kies and Triple A-hole folk’ll do me in.”
“You have such an elegant way with words, Sam. How could I tire of that?” Rettic grinned.
“Ah, there we go.” The old man lifted a Kolderic model 25 round hand-blaster under the desk lamp. “All cleaned up for you like the day it was made…over, what…two-hundred years ago?”
Rettic looked in quiet awe at the gun’s dull finish in the light, nearly overwhelmed with memories of it gripped in his father’s hands, the smell of the harvest fields and the sound of wind as he followed his footsteps on the farm. Suns soft in the sky. Dirt beneath his feat. “It’s never looked this good, Sam.”
“Yeah, It’s a might prettier now,” he said as he handed it to Rettic, “but like I told you two weeks ago when you brought it in, I can’t do nothing to it that’ll help your shitty aim.”
Rettic holstered the weapon under his overcoat. “What are you going to do with yourself, Sam?”
The man raised his eyebrows with a drawn out sigh. “I’m gonna stay here with the ship, just like you’d do with yours. Another antique among the antiques. Who knows, maybe the Matari’s have a refined taste for keeping artifacts around after all.”
Rettic looked at him with solemn sympathy.
“Oh don’t you pity me, boy. Don’t you do it.” Sam became as serious as Rettic had ever seen him. “You see, the difference between a capsuleer and a mortal man isn’t that you live and I die. It’s that a man learns to accept death. A capsuleer will always have to live it around him.”
Sam saluted Rettic. “But I’ll try to refrain from pitying you, friend.”
Rettic nodded a sincere thanks to the old man and walked to the door, opening to reveal a flood of over-comm alerts drowned by the droning turbines of Titan doomsday weapons charging outside. Station officers shouted to escort the capsuleer off the docking bridge. He looked back as the shop doors slid shut to see Sam loading a shotgun.
Station debris tore through the hulls of docked ships. A Gallentean woman stood crying, shouting in the floor of the hangar as an enslaved Matari man lay bleeding under a stairway. The escorting officer slowly detached his arm from Rettic’s side as he gasped, a hole ripped through his chest. Families of miners and industrialists stood stranded in their dwelling rooms as their capsuleer fathers and wives flew from the hangar.
Rettic boarded Tensegrity, his Catalyst, and undocked to slowly pass the capital ships fully focused on station fire.
Fare well Fire Star.
Rettic’s Log are the accounts of Rettic in-character, his history, and the story of my experiences in New Eden as seen through his eyes. Read all of them here.
This is also a submission to the Eve Monkey’s Fan-Fiction Blogfest no. 2. See other submissions here.
