Difference between revisions of "Someone Else's Terms"

Revision as of 11:35, 25 May 2010

Preface

"Someone Else's Terms" is a piece of player-created fiction written by Casiella Truza. Originally published on the blog Ecliptic Rift in five parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

Someone Else's Terms

The massive battlecruiser finally slid back into its hangar after its return voyage. The magnetic clamps engaged to hold it in place and prevent it from accidentally crushing any of the small maintenance drones that now swarmed over it for inspection and fueling. A gantry lifted out the piloting capsule through a small recess and hauled it to a disembarkation chamber for the captain to exit with at least a small bit of dignity.

Casiella hated this part: gasping for air as her lungs switched back to oxygen from the ambiotic fluid of the pod gave her a brief sensation of drowning. She knew, of course, that she wouldn’t drown and that the systems always worked. But something deep in the reptilian hindbrain just refused to learn the lesson. She didn’t enjoy the sensation of entering the pod and swallowing the fluid, either. Leaving the pod, though, felt much worse because it came accompanied by the disengaging of the neural connection to her ship.

Moments before, she could navigate among the stars as easily as any other human might turn their heads. She could see millions of kilometers to focus on a specific object. With the same effort usually required to gesture with a hand, she could sweep away enemies (or competitors, which amounted to the same thing) via volleys of missiles. Her drones acted to accomplish her whims. That structure there? Demolish it? She just needed to want it to happen, and it did. Back on her own two feet, in her “meatspace body,” all those advantages went away.

But flesh has its own advantages.

She quickly ducked into the nearby shower to rinse off the remaining fluid and don a dry jumpsuit. A light above the door turned green and one of her senior staff assistants entered: a Krusual woman whose splotchy facial birthmarks made her an outcast in most of Minmatar society.

Casiella addressed her assistant while the cosmetibots attended to her hair. “That part of the plan went well, Jorunn. The RSS agent seemed very pleased.”

Jorunn focused on her datapad for a moment before speaking. “Yes, the intel dataflows have already engaged. Nearly all their agents have requested your attention. I suppose those Angel Diamond tags went over well.”

Before responding, Casiella selected a facial tattoo type for the night and the cosmetibots went to work. “He didn’t even ask where I’d got them. I think he just assumed I’d gone out and found them myself. Enough ISK can get you anything, though.”

“These days, that’s true enough. The Republic has warmed to you somewhat since you returned from Syndicate space. By now, they’ve chosen to overlook some of the work we did out there.”

The hint of a cruel smile curled across Casiella’s lips. “So much the better for them. The RSS knows the value of a good informant when it finds one, and they’d rather have me working for them than against them.” Now that the cosmetibots finished their tasks and buzzed rapidly back into their receptacles, she stood and looked up at Jorunn, waiting for the inevitable.

“You’ll have a tough time balancing the internal factions, though. Outwardly, of course, they’ll have nothing for praise for you now that you’ve joined the Tribal Liberation Force, but internally they will prefer that you work with them.” Jorunn turned around the datapad and presented a few dossiers before explaining that her employer would need to choose an agent or two.

Casiella pondered for a few moments before tapping a thin finger against her chin. “So you just assumed I’d go right for contract work rather than patrolling or ‘plex security?”

This time, Jorunn smiled cruelly in an echo of her employer’s expression a few moments ago. “You wanted that starbase in high-security space. I told you that the TLF would put you on the fast track to it, and agent contracts will get you there fastest.”

“Fine, then.” The petite Sebiestor sighed. “But let’s get this done quickly. I’ve better things to do than fight this war on someone else’s terms.”

“No.”

“Again?”

“I don’t like it. What else do you have?”

The TLF agent slammed the table. “I have had it with you. Get out of my office.”

Casiella arched an eyebrow, stretching a facial tattoo slightly. “Perhaps you don’t remember who I am…”

“I know damn well who you are. Now move your ass out of here. If I can still see you in thirty seconds, Security will fix that. One.”

“You just haven’t given me an assignm–”

“Two.”

“–ent that works for me.”

“Twenty-one.”

“What about, you know, three?”

“I counted fast. Get out.”

The diminutive Sebiestor pulled herself up with what dignity she could muster and ripped the patch off her flight suit, throwing it in the agent’s face.

“I’m damn tired of fighting on someone else’s terms. You can keep your fake little war.”

The agent’s face turned red and he began to spout obscure obscenities that even Casiella hadn’t heard before. So, instead, she just smirked and turned to leave. As she exited through the door, she heard something whistling through the air and ducked slightly. An ancient Lustrevik vase shattered on the door frame next to her head.

The militia didn’t really suit somebody like her. Which meant that her handlers in the RSS — and, worse, her attaché Jorunn — turned out to have been right.

She hated it when things worked out like that.

Her facial expression alone could have cleared the way through a battalion of Kameiras.

Casiella stormed down a corridor, following a small projected arrow on the walls back to her hangar. Pools of shadows and light blended together, obscuring the worn and corroded texture of the walls and floors. At one junction, Jorunn waited for her. The two women looked into each other’s eyes for a moment and their countenances blazed. After the moment passed, they began to walk together towards the hangar.

Finally, the Krusual woman spoke. “You could have handled that a bit better.”

Casiella flared her nostrils but said nothing in response.

“Really, you’ve brought this upon us. But I have an idea to save our relationship with the TLF, and I’ve already drafted an order for six Vigil-class frigates in Rens…”

At this, the petite capsuleer whirled and glared with white-hot anger at the scarred woman towering over her. She kept her voice low and restrained despite the look on her face. “Should you be doing that?”

Jorunn drew herself to her full height and bunched her eyebrows together, with a concomitant effect on the scars and birthmarks across her face and around her head. “If you want the Republic to work with you, you’ll need to work with them. And those military complexes out in Devoid and the Bleak Lands won’t capture themselves.”

The two stood in stark silence for several minutes before Casiella turned again, leaving Jorunn standing behind her. The taller woman waited for several moments before a flickering indicator on her datapad drew her out of angered reverie.

“Flight plan laid in for Rens… she does listen. Sometimes.”

Flames trailed from the Vigil-class frigate’s engine nacelles as the docking bag tractor beams nudged it into the right inbound vector.

A cold, hostile voice spoke over the traffic control frequency. “Arzad 8 24IC station to TLF Vigil… prepare for magnetic clamps… engaged.”

Inside her control suit, submerged in her capsule, Casiella shuddered involuntarily. After this fourth try to capture a facility in Devoid, she’d not managed anything beyond three destroyed Vigils and what would probably turn into a repair bill. Outrunning the large battleships while she tried to take over the local mainframe infrastructure came naturally, but when they deployed their Executioner-class frigates, the Vigil just couldn’t dodge the pulse lasers well enough. For once, she’d gotten away without ending up in her pod, but that didn’t mean much, really.

As the gantry lifted her pod, she reflected on her next steps. Maybe she should try to gather a small militia squadron for help? At a minimum, she could use one other capsuleer to provide a diversion, distracting the response forces while she got in close for a few minutes and worked over the control systems. That would have to wait, though, while she disengaged from the hydrostatic capsule itself.

Goo dripped off her suit as she looked around for directions to the pilot showers. She could hear shouting down the corridor, but shrugged it off. Capsuleers had free run of all stations in CONCORD-controlled space, even if the station owners held their own corporations in a state of war. This didn’t work so well out in nullsec, but here, even though her corp had officially registered with the Tribal Liberation Front, the 24th Imperial Crusade would leave her alone.

A small blinking light caught her attention. “Blasted meatsuits. Never quite work correctly…” For a moment, she swore to have this clone biomassed rather than go see a medical tech about the eyes.

The blinking light expanded into a full warning symbol and a voice spoke in her ear. “Emergency: please return to your capsule immediately.” Her clone didn’t have a biological defect at all. No, the sensory implants tied directly to her visual cortex notified her of an impending…

CRASH!

A doorway at the end of the hall burst open. Grim-faced 24IC marines aimed their weapons at her. “Station security! Get down on the ground immediately! NOW NOW NOW!”

Casiella ducked instinctively back around the corner into the small bay where her capsule waited. She slammed the control panel and a set of blast doors closed behind her, forming a small iris as they did so. Stomping boots and angry voices convinced her that she didn’t have much time. She pointed at a medical drone. “Get me hooked up.”

“Right away, captain.”

The door sizzled as the security guards prepared to breach it. As soon as the medical drone connected the neural interface to the socket at the base of her skull, she immediately brought up her pod’s navigation systems and laid in a course.

She skipped the preflight checklist and held her breath for a single heartbeat. As soon as the guards forced open the blast doors, she engaged the pod’s impulse engines. Fire and noise bathed the small docking bay. Could she hear screams as the pod lifted back into the traffic pattern?

Probably just her imagination. She’d check the recordings once she reached Abudban.

The gate shimmered with energy for a moment before firing. A pod appeared a few seconds later, scant kilometers away. Without hesitation, it aligned towards the fourth planet and warped away. The local customs officers paid it no particular mind, as capsuleer pods couldn’t carry any cargo and this particular pilot had no outstanding warrants or other legal problems.

As it drew close to the Tribal Liberation Force station and requested docking, the militia command tried to hail the pilot. Casiella chose not to respond immediately. The docking systems drew her pod into the labyrinthine corridors that led to hangars. Her pod remained suspended by electromagnetic forces, far above the light pits in the hangar floor. She made no move to exit the pod.

She did, however, finally open a communication channel with TLF command.

“Pilot Truza, please report in. We have data that indicate—”

“I respectfully decline to submit a report.”

“We require a report, pilot. TLF SOP 5.3.12 specifies reports must be provided upon instruction.”

“On behalf of my corporation, I hereby submit my resignation from the Tribal Liberation Force, effective immediately.”

A pause, then: “Please confirm that. We still have need of pilots, simply requiring a minimum of order and discipline.”

“Confirmed. Truza out.”

With that, she signaled the dock control systems to release and relaunch her pod into Abudban space. Once she had cleared the docking rings, the pod aligned to a nearby stargate and accelerated quickly into warp.

The space around the Brutor Tribe Treasury station looked nearly solid with traffic. Ships streamed in and out of the station, one of the busiest in the entire cluster. Freighters and industrials carried equipment, resources, and passengers in and out: the lifeblood of the economy, or at least the capsuleer economy. Combat ships docked to take on ammunition and refit, or undocked to engage other ships. Autocannon fire aimed carefully between neutral vessels, and thick beams of powerful energy streamed through space from one ship to another.

Amongst this silent cacophony, a pod slipped quietly into a docking bay. Casiella chose again not to leave the pod, interfacing through the world purely through her implant. A coded report came in from a contact inside the Republic Security Service, labeled simply “Arzad”.

Her ocular implant and general disengagement of her glands and other physical processes kept her from weeping into the ectoplasm. Inside her mind, though, she squared her jaw and drew further resolve. Her crew enslaved and remaining ships confiscated, all in the name of that harlot empress. The report had little information on individuals or casualties, but they’d confirmed her aide Jorunn had not appeared in any of the infirmary rosters on the station.

The time had come. Casiella would fight, not on someone else’s terms, but her own.