Drafted-Skills
Drafted - Skills
Skills
Sleep. You struggle to get some, scenes of the fight break through continuously. You find yourself analysing what happened and what you should have done. You conclude, just before you welcome the forgetfulness of sleep, that you do have a lot to learn.
Next day, after a hearty breakfast, you head out to the hangar, slip in your pod and enter your ship. The few glances you gave your ship before entering the pod are confirmed as soon as you connect to it. Everything is repaired. Your cargo hold has been emptied and your ammunition has been restocked. Aura even prepared a list of things you have to do before the end of the day. Check balance, apparently you have a new account with a bank, after your other accounts have been seized by the Gallente Empire. You exit the hangar and steer towards the exercise area you left yesterday. Other items on Aura’s to do list is choosing a skillbook and read your messages. As you reach your designated training area, the threat indicator starts buzzing in your ears. The drone ships you left yesterday have returned, and apparently they brought friends. While you try to put your defenses in place, attacking the drones, you let Aura read out the messages to you. There are a number of Concord messages. Killing those pirate ships yesterday entitles you to the bounties that were placed on their heads, as the Sergeant already pointed out. They weren’t high level, well known pirates such as Salvador Sarpati, but still every ISK counts. This was made crystal clear by a message of the Federal Defense Union administration, fifty per cent of all income is diverted to paying of the debt you have. Other Concord messages tell you about the assists you gave the Sergeant and ensign Simmons in finishing off the other pirates.
“Next message” you say to Aura, in the meanwhile performing a barrel roll to avoid the fire of the remaining seven drone ships. Two of them already rendered to space dust.
“An appointment with the Sergeant concerning your skillplan” Aura continues. You ask Aura to place the meeting in your agenda and set a reminder for it on your datapad . Another ship erupts into flames and debris as Aura confirms the appointment.
“No more messages.”
“Finally, now what was I supposed to do again?”
“You need to choose a skillbook and check your account balance.”
“Ok, so what’s the balance” you reply.
“Currently you have 3500 ISK in your account.”
“Wow, I’m rich” you say sarcastically.
“Not really, you still owe the Gallente Federation 34.399.087.910,47 ISK.”
“I know I know, I was being sarcastic” you reply, a bit frustrated.
“I know that”, Aura replies “I was merely being accurate.”
You pause for a moment, if she had a face you would like to punch her, “never mind then, what about those skillbooks?”
“What about them?”
“Which ones are available and which one should I choose?”
“There are a number of skills you can choose from. Broken down you can choose from either offensive or defensive. There are categories of weapons, armour, shield and energy.”
You think for a minute and then ask which one you should choose, based on the fight the other day.
“Well, weapons will certainly improve the speed of which you can dispense of your enemies, but with your shooting and flying skills one will inevitably hit you.”
“Hey now, be nice!” as you put a couple of shots in the remains of another drone ship. A few long range shots take out the remainder of your shields and start denting your armour.
“Case in point” Aura points out, “shields aren’t the Gallente strong suit, armour on the other hand keeps you separated from space dust.”
“Alright then, armour it is. Show me the options.” A list of every armour related skill is shown, hardening, repairing, remote repairing which by the way sounds useless, hull upgrades, mechanics, armour rigging and the list continues in details.
“There’s so much choice, what should I choose from these?”
“A number of these were already part of the training programs, embedded in the chip in your head. I suggest you choose one of the armour compensation skills. Serpentis like the ones you encountered yesterday, do mostly thermal and kinetic damage.”
“Let’s choose thermal then. I reckon there will be more Serpentis pirates that need to be sorted out in the near future by us grunts.”
“Skill selected” Aura replies “in order to use it, please report to the station after you finished your current assignment.” A quick boost to the engines and you manoeuvre your ship behind one of the drones. Unleashing your weapons, you see its hull buckle and explode in a fiery cloud of smoke and fire. Veering away from the explosion you try to get on an intercept course with the last two drones. Five minutes later the last drone is left in a thousand pieces in the training quadrant of the Green Echelon. Slowly you turn your ship towards the station while the adrenaline still surges through your system. On your way back you tune into the local audio feed. A burst of chatter breaks the silence.
“Veer right, use your armour repairer” Then in your peripheral vision you see a ship bursting into flames. Quickly you let your camera drone focus on the blast area. The wreck you are looking at is surrounded by drone ships. You throttle down and slowly come to a full stop.
“What happened Aura?”
“Apparently one of your Green Echelon comrades failed his exercise.”
“So, he’ll clone jump, won’t he?”
“No” is Aura’s simple answer.
“Why not?”.
“At the moment your training is still in its early stages. If you can’t survive basic training, it will be too costly for the Federal Defense Union as studies have shown in the past. He would have failed anyway, this is the easiest way to sort out the better pilots from the bad pilots.” You pause in silence. Another one of the Green Echelon down, this time not of his own accord, but as a result of the training. Already you have lost five, for a lack of a better word, comrades from the Green Echelon.
“Couple of questions, Aura.”
“Proceed, ask a way as they say.”
“When will I be allowed to clone jump, that is, when will the exercises be over? And, how are the other echelons doing compared to us?”
“To answer your first question. I do not know. As soon as the general signs off on your training your clone privileges should be restored. However, when the general will sign is unknown as of yet. The second question is easier. The current Green Echelon had five deaths so far. The blue, red and yellow echelons have respectively three, six and two trainees left.”
“What? How come there are so few left?”
“It has to do with the trainingimplant you and your comrades had implanted. You are the second group to have these implanted, containing a basic skill package designed by the Sergeant.”
“So how did the previous Green Echelon perform?”
“None survived the training.”
“Wow, so this is why this war with the Caldari is going so well.”
“Incoming message.”
“Play it” you reply.
“Message from the medical staff on the station. Since you have chosen your new skill there are some medical procedures that need to be performed. Your trainingimplant needs to be removed and there are a number of basic attribute enhancers ready to be implanted.”
“Trainingimplant removed? Why? And what are those attribute enhancers?”
“Your trainingimplant will be removed because you absorbed all the skills you can from it. It needs to be removed because it will impede learning any new skills, such as the thermal armour compensation skill you chose earlier. As to the attribute enhancers, these will boost your attributes, such as perception, memory, willpower, intelligence and charisma. These attributes define how you do things and your ability to learn new skills.”
“Oh good, thank heavens it doesn’t sound like a bad computer game. And more metal in my head, what a great idea.”
“Oh stop whining, you’ll be fine. Now move on to the station, you are awaited.”
“Did the Sergeant fiddle with your settings again?” you reply to the sly remark of your ship’s AI, as you throttle up and steer your ship onwards to the awaiting hangar of the station.
After you get out of your pod, one of the medical staff insists you take a good long shower. Standing there in your underwear, dripping the jelly like pod fluid on the floor, you were planning on doing that anyway. However you didn’t count on him standing just outside of the shower cubicle hurrying you along. After the refreshing shower you are marched to the medical bay. By the time you get there you see Simmons walking out as you walk in. You greet each other and you surmise he had this procedure just before you did. He looks the same, just blinking at the cold neon lights of the hallway, swaggering a bit, looking just a little off balance. As if he had a couple of drinks too many, combined with the hangover of the next morning.
“Never mind him” one of the medics says to you. “It’s your turn.” Apprehensively you walk into the medical bay, greeted by the doctor, at least you hope him to be one.
“Ah there is the second one. Sit down.” Not waiting for a reply he turns around towards a tray of medical equipment, including some odd looking shiny metal objects. Grabbing the electronic syringe from the tray, scanning the number of your medical file, the doctor turns to you.
“What, not even a nice hello, or a date with a movie and a bit of dinner? Straight to business huh?”
The doctor doesn’t even reply. You guess he heard it all before and just focuses on the job at hand. He presses the syringe to your neck and you feel your body go numb accompanied by the hiss of the syringe. Lights out is the last thought you have before you close your eyes into the induced coma. In the meanwhile the doctor sets aside his syringe. The nurse hooks up your body to a number of monitoring devices. Flicking back your eyelids, the doctor checks if you’re out cold. With his left hand he brings down the main implant machine, while his other hand cradles your head. In a well-practiced manoeuvre he places your head in the machine and starts hooking up the additional sensors.
“Fortunately this is a fully automated process now” he explains to the nurse.
“How did you do it before?” she asks.
“It was more of a manual process. Hard wiring the install slots of the attribute enhancer cradles was an open brain surgery at first. But considering it was a hit and miss operation most of the time, we quickly had to improve the procedure, because a pissed off capsuleer is not someone you want to mess with.
“And these guys, they’re not capsuleers yet?”
“I still have to get used to the fact that you’re new here. Yes, these guys are no capsuleers as such, they’re draftees, so to speak. They’re criminals, sentenced to death and forced to make a choice. Either they live, repaying their debt to society, perhaps giving their lives for the Gallente Empire, or still just die. This one is of the Green Echelon, they’re a bit different as they get a special training chip to help them learn the basic skills of flying our spaceships. It’s still in an experimental phase, the first batch of trainees all had severe neurological trauma. A number of them went into a catatonic state during manoeuvres and were killed by the drone ships. Others went insane and couldn’t be cured. The chip has been altered to provide just the basic skills, no advanced stuff and the period it’s installed has been drastically shortened, in order to prevent any negative effects. Now we need to get it out.” He reaches for the machine, starting the scan of your brain, updating your medical file with the changed neurological pathways that have been created in the month since your first scan. Preserving all the newly learned tricks and experiences. Then it starts to cut out the trainingimplant, by taking off the top part of your skull, cutting through the skin and searing the ruptured blood vessels with a blue laser. In the blue hue of the laser it pops out the trainingimplant and starts to prepare your brain for the new implants. Connecting the wires like a mesh over the brain, preparing it to house the five basic implants as well as the interconnected implant in which your skillbooks will be uploaded and distributed to the five parts which will help to implement the skill into your brain, as a slow computer program. Slowly the implants will change your neurological pathways to get a grip on the skill. In a blur of motion the machine checks every connection it has laid, making sure all the implants work as designed. Repeating scans to make sure all the existing knowledge is still there, just as it was before it started. Also making sure the clone jumping chip is still working properly, whilst making sure that it is still offline, as per the general’s order. With a moderate beeping it alerts the doctor that this part of the procedure has been completed and needs to be signed off before it can finish. Calmly the doctor reviews the work the implant machine has done, pointing out the various interesting bits to the nurse. With a flick on the button he signs off on the procedure, activating the closure procedure in order to let the implant machine replace the top of your skull and stitch up your skin without so much as a scar. “Now to upload the skill he chose. What was it again, weapons or armour? Ah there it is, thermal armour compensation. Mmm, even looking at his brain before, he is smarter than expected.”
“Why do you say that?”, the nurse asks.
“Well, when you’ve been here as long as I have, you will see that the ones that go for the better weapons are usually the ones that die first, the ones that start out by minding the ship they’re flying in, will usually live a lot longer.” Then the Sergeant steps in.
“How is the Green Echelon doing with the transplants, doc?”
“Ah Sergeant, I was expecting you earlier, Simmons already had his' implanted. This one is almost finished, just uploading his chosen skill.”
“What did he choose?”
“Thermal armour compensation”
“Ah, a smart one, good, and what did Simmons choose?”
With a knowing look at the nurse he replies “Kinetic armour compensation, he figured it would be more helpful against the Caldari.”
“Good, smart and remembering what he’s here for. Creating their skill plan will be so much easier as long as they keep remembering they are not immortal for quite some time, unless the general signs off on their clones. For the Green Echelon it might be a tad different then with the previous echelons. These have the potential to survive the first year at least.” Blinking at the bright light, you slowly come to grip with your splitting headache. You look accusingly at the doctor. He just grins at you
“What do you expect? You had brain surgery” he adds with a smile. He hands you some pills to counter the headache. You swallow them quickly, hoping that the speed at which you swallow them is an indication of how fast they will work. You thankfully take the glass of water the nurse holds out for you. After drowning the contents in a quick gulp, you are walked to the exit.
“So you think it went well? No problems I need to know of?” you ask the nurse.
“For as far as I can tell everything went as expected” she replies, looking at you with a concerned expression on her face. “But then again, this is only the second operation I have been a part of. So that doesn’t really make me an expert.”
At that moment the Sergeant steps up to the two of you “Excuse me nurse, but this criminal better report to his quarters and prepare for our meeting later today and start working on his skillplan.” A shadow crosses the face of the nurse as she realizes what you are. You stumble through the exit and try to hurry down the corridor towards your quarters, barely noticing Jean Paul Ferrier waiting outside.
You try to reassure him that everything is fine, but the nurse already pulls him inside and you hear the doctor say “Ah the third one, good sit down.” With the sound of the doctor reaching for the medical tray with the syringe, the nurse shuts the door and you start struggling to the Green Echelon quarters.