It was happening again.
Rettic awoke in a panicked sweat and ran to the sink, his stomach retching as he expelled an orange bile from his mouth. Pod fluid.
A flash of brightness suddenly filled the room with a perfect simulation of atmospheric morning sunlight. The window projections in the cheap Oursulaert temp-dwelling had mistaken his sudden movement for a wake-up routine. “I’m still sleeping,” Rettic said as he squinted so his eyes wouldn’t adjust to the light that was feeding his migraine. The room dimmed in apology.
The first time Rettic felt this he thought it was a faulty clone. The extreme disorientation. The need for sleep. It was more than a physical pain—it was an ever-present feeling of being lost. It pulled his brain, tilted his sense of place. It wasn’t safe to fly this way, but he had persisted with the intent to get himself in the wrong situation until the clone was finally ripped from its pod. Finally, relief.
But it didn’t last. In fact, over time it had gotten worse. The physical clone had nothing to do with it. It was a mental sickness—a psychological needle in his mind that he carried with his metaphysical existence.
Every time it happened the same way: He was born into a new clone body with the feeling of being able to breathe again, and over a few days, maybe weeks time, the pressure returned. The longer he stayed in the body, the more smothering it became.
Rettic washed his face and stared at his reflection in the mirror display, breathing slowly.
It was known as pod sickness. Independent bioengineers had claimed for years that research proved the potential of such a toll on an unchecked capsuleer’s mind state. Between the eternal sleeplessness, adjusting to artificial gravities, going years at a time without looking out a window, and the utterly surreal feeling of walking again after weeks in a pod—the earliest capsuleers were sometimes driven to extended states of psychosis. Sometimes they’d eventually recover after adapting to the realities of eternal life. Others remained as mentally capable in space as a rolling ore.
But with the regulation of cloning technology, Cromeaux Inc. now injects first time capsuleers with enough stabilization meds to have even the youngest of minds accepting their godliness as easily as they’d accept an ISK handout.
These days, the only capsuleers that still suffered from the now fabled ‘pod sickness’ were black market capsuleers. Pilots that were illegally cloned for the first time. Pilots that were illegally registered in CONCORD’s records. Pilots like Rettic.
Another white flash. But this time it wasn’t the windows. Rettic vomited again.
He yearned for solid ground. Not just dirt beneath his feet, but an existential ground. A home, or the closest thing he knew to it. He wanted his sister. A single reminder of her always brought back a cascade of memories that seemed more fogged every day: his father hunting in golden wheat fields, Aloraluna laughing in the creek. Clouds. Clouds that made his child mind know with piece of mind that Villore was the center of the universe.
Now his reality was twisted. There was no down, there was no up, and there sure as hell wasn’t a center to his universe.
Aloraluna, I’m dying. Where are you?
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.
The war in Providence has shaken out the excess, so to speak, and I along with them. M3, gods bless ‘em, is staying behind to fight ‘til their last breath. Frankly, I wouldn’t expect them to do anything otherwise. A merc job isn’t just a job to them. They breathe it, and live it. They become their client. Until the next job…then they do it all over again.
I don’t have that kind of devotion in me. Maybe I’m a lesser man for it.
Either way, that wasn’t my fight.
So I’m in Empire space again. Self-employed. Doing some trading in Oursulaert III, Renyn. Hell, I’ve even taken up a small exploration gig with a new partner I’ve found. Nocipe, real nice pilot. Green as hell to life in the black, but nice, and a lot of heart for the fight. I’m showing him a thing or two I learned in the outer rim, and he’s helping me keep the front to my small corporation. A fair trade.
But exploration. How about that? I’d like to think dad would be proud. If nothing else, CONCORD is. It’ll keep them from getting suspicious for a—
The muffled static of a docking clerk interrupted the feed—”Balle VII to the Copernicus, docking clearance has been granted”—click.
—Ok well, business calls. I, ah, I know you aren’t tellin’ me where I’m gonna find you. I know you aren’t going to answer this message either. But, if you want to at least tell me you ain’t in any kind of—you know.
Just be safe, sister. You know where to find me. You always do.
—
NEOCOM MSG Transmittal - 15:04 - Balle - Sinq Laison
Outgoing: Registered Capsuleer Rettic
To Incoming: Aloraluna - 4 MSGs Unrecieved
SENT
—
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.
Bleep.
Rettic is running through a crowded station mall. The sounds of sales tents and cheap food vendors are fogged through the noise of the disapproving people he pushes past. A station officer standing at the entryway of a pedestrian lift makes eye contact with Rettic through the commotion. Shit. Three more are alerted on the opposing bridge-way—in the direct path of the ship hangar. Think, Rettic. He grabs the back of his neck to feel the lukewarm socket imbedded in his spine. This takes you right out of their jurisdiction, and straight to CONCORD. If that happens, she dies. The piercing slap of a blaster round rang off the tritanium wall behind his head. Rettic immediately ran toward the officers as the crowd scattered in cries—
Bleep.
The eclipse of the star across the hull of the Catalyst reminded him his dreams as a child. As he observed the open sky through the lens of the camera drone he thought of looking at maps of New Eden with his father, plotting the reaches of civilization while imagining the possibilities of better worlds. Hell, his true wish was never having to set his feet on another dust covered planet again. The black engulfed him, and he breathed deeply—
Bleep.
Rettic dropped his hand of cards on the table, expressionless. “Fold.”
The ugliest of the Matari men scoffed under his breath. “Just like a Gallentean.” Smoke from their cigars danced across the room as the lights from the strip show cut through it like Amarrian beams. Rettic took another sip of his drink while his eyes fixed on a young Jin-Mei woman giving a lap dance across the room. She moved slowly over the table on her hands and knees, crawling submissively for the enjoyment of a few pirates. To Rettic’s disturbed amazement, she was heartbreakingly graceful. It was almost as if she enjoyed it. He wondered if there was any remnant of the girl he grew up with on Villore II—if there was any semblance of his sister left.
Bleep.
Rettic held his gun over the bleeding Matari gambler, who was still holding his chips in his fists while crawling over the body of a cigar-choked corpse. The room reeked of blaster fire. “God dammit man, what you need? You want money?” The stumbled backward as he threw the chips at Rettic. “The fuck you want?!”
Rettic motioned for Aloraluna to move.
“Oh, you want the girl? I can get you girls, man. I can get you more than this bitch. I can get you Matari women too! You ever had a real woman, man? They’d show you shit you—”
Rettic cocked the gun.
“Dammit man don’t kill me. I’ll do anything you want, man! Anything!”
“Just like a Matari.” Rettic pulls the tri—
Bleep.
Aloraluna shouts at Rettic, throwing empty plates in the dining quarters of his Catalyst. She tells him she didn’t want to be saved. She tells him that she at least had money with the pirates. She tells him he’s no god of the skies, and that his clone body sickens her. She doesn’t know the sacrifice he gave to become a capsuleer through the black market. She doesn’t know he did this for her. She walks out the door, and for the second time in his life, he couldn’t stop her.
Bleep.
“Kirith Kodachi,” the pilot introduced himself. “You’re interested in M3 Corp?” The hangar deck of the Federation Customs Testing Facility reached to a seemingly limitless height above them, with only the sparkling lights from countless glittering windows revealing its bounds. The beauty of the Oursulaert station was shadowed, however, by the monolithic Chimera class Carrier looming behind the newly met pilot.
“I’m interested in getting as far away from Empire space as possible,” Rettic said, leaning in as the Caldari man offered him his hand in greeting. “And yes, I hear you guys know what you’re doing.”
The pilot answered with only a wry smile—
Bleep.
Rettic stood alongside his fellow corp mates as the ceremony for M3’s induction into the Paxton Federation continued. The Amarrian officials of Curatores Veritatis Alliance watched over the assembly from their floating thrones as the directors from each corporation lined the stage. Well, if you haven’t completely screwed yourself yet, this may be it. Rettic considered the congealing possibility that he may never be able to show his face on Villore again. A Gallentean working with the Amarr would be as kindly welcomed as a Blood Raider in a donor bank.
But any disillusions about right and wrong being genetic absolutes dissolved the moment Rettic saw a child enslaved by men of an enslaved race. If the Amarr would pay him for the corpse of a pirate, he’ll bow to any god they damn well please. As there are no boundaries to the black skies, there are no limits to the broken morals of man.
Rettic bowed his head in prayer with the rest of the room.
Bleep.
“God damn it,” Rettic mumbled as he awoke in his Incursus hull, spinning off a jump gate in the Catch region. “M3, do you read?! I’m bubbled at the SV5 gate in F9E, I repeat I’m—” A rocket cracked the armor of the ship, disabling his voice comms. The Incursus burned toward the outer rim of the disruption field only to be met by an assault frigate on the other side.
“We come for our people,” claimed a Heretic pilot in local comms as the rest of the gate-camp fleet continued to pound the armor to critical.
“And we’re waiting,” Rettic calmly replied. The hull ripped open and—
Bleep.
A clone gasps for air.
Bleep.
Doctors rush into the room. The sound of the heart monitor falls to a constant tone as Rettic pulls the cables from the socket in his neck and walks his new body out the door.
Bleeeeeeeeeeeeee—
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.
“Just…Rettic?”
“Yes, that’s right. Just Rettic.”
The agent flashed a sarcastic smile back at the capsuleer, who sat relaxed, making the plastanium chair look much more comfortable than it felt. He saw her thumb through his files out of the corner of his eye, all three pages, as he looked ahead through the tinted glass at the shadows of murmuring station-dwellers passing by. The banter of market salesmen and cheap souvenir vendors shouting on the bridges was barely drowned by the hum of the broadcast unit in the hazy room. This was a Gallente station, all right.
The agent closed the folder. “Well, Rettic, you have barely an account as a capsuleer,” she said as she looked up at his rolling eyes. “But enough of one to land yourself in three corporations in a matter of weeks. Moving kind of quick, aren’t we?”
Rettic leaned forward with a half-apologetic grin, “Actually, ah, I wouldn’t count the Caille University as one of the three.” Seeing no amusement in her lack-of-expression, he sat back again, slowly. “…For the record.”
“For the record…right. Well, listen, I don’t know how a poor-as-shit son of a miner like you gets to be a capsuleer, and apparently CONCORD doesn’t either. Do you get what I’m saying?”
The crackling news monitor buzzed the monotonous voice of Scope reporters in the corner of the room, diverting the agent’s attention for a moment. Some big news story is going down.
“You’re saying you’d like to get to know me a little more… How about dinner?” Rettic interjected.
“I’m saying you don’t have a record, pilot,” she threw back at him with apparent satisfaction. “Trust isn’t our currency. It’s Kredits. And our corp isn’t handing out either to a pilot that can’t supply a proper history file.”
Rettic was looking out the window again as the flashing of a neon sign hanging from the foggy silhouette of a Jin-Mei salesman lit the room in a heart beat rhythm. Pleasure films, very cheap, pleasure films, ultimate fantasy, the man’s voice chanted in syncopation. Another dead end, he thought. There isn’t an end of empire space that CONCORD doesn’t have under its watch, and if you don’t work by their laws, you don’t work. Well, not unless I’m desperate enough to hit the outer regions. You aren’t there yet, are you, Rettic?
He thought of his sister. The money. He was desperate enough.
“As a matter of fact, under protocol I’m going to have to get security to have a closer look at this,” she continued with a smile. “So, if you’d like to stay put, I might have you stick around for dinner after all.”
“You know what, that’s alright.” He leaned forward to stand.
“I wasn’t asking,” she said as she lifted a pistol from under her chair and began to reach for her comm-unit.
And there you have it! The flickering news monitor interrupted the moment with a sudden change in volume…Coming to you live, from Scope Galactic News, Colonel Roc Wieler has just pleaded “guilty” to charges of practicing slavery…
“Well I’ll be damned,” the agent said in disbelief.
Seizing the opportunity, Rettic lunged his legs forward, slamming the agent’s desk against her chest with a screech. The pistol let loose from her right hand and dropped to the concrete floor. Rettic grabbed his file and threw open the office door, nearly knocking the porn salesman to the ground as he ran. The curses of the old Jin-Mei were soon smothered by the echoes of the passing crowd as the figure of Rettic disappeared into the thick of the neon jungle.
“Orvolle III security…” the comm mumbled. The agent gasped for breath, unable to reply.
“I repeat, this is CONCORD…are you in need of assistance?”
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.
The dry, overly compressed voice of a young man drowns the electronic static of his recording device.
…’es this piece of shit work…
A muffled crack, then a reluctant pause of breath before the voice continues.
These are the accounts of Rettic: a capsuleer born of the Gallente bloodline, and currently in training at the University of Caille. I am of my original blood. Not a clone, well, as far as I know.
As of today, my mind’s goal is to let the black sky take me where it will, give me work, and hopefully not be crushed by the wilderness called New Eden.
Out.
