Innocence
Innocence Part 1
Stars reflect deeply into a glistening eye, the lid gently closes producing a tear. The eye gazes out once more, trying, failing to take in the radiant beauty of the cosmos. She is suspended in space and time, like a fetus with the combined suns of the universe serving as her a womb.
Floating in an endless stream of stars.
Bliss for the first time.
She is brought close to a field of twinkling lights, they are like stars, not stars, closer still. Burning wrecks. Those that have mobility use it to limp away from each other. Some are still breaking apart and spilling out fire, oxygen and human beings from their depths.
She wakes up. Her eyes slowly open. An unconventional reaction to such nightmarish visions, if truth be told given the circumstance of this reality, she preferred the dream.
Her room vibrates constantly; the gentle pulse of the ship is soothing despite the cold angular Caldari design ethic. They are in deep space recon for the corp, on the lookout or any wrecks turning up, desperation has pushed them into lowsec. Concord does not know these regions, the pirates do.
– +00:27 Personal mission timer, encounter with unknown scanner contact–
She couldn’t fathom why this hulk of a man chose to spend a considerable portion of his wage on those cigars. They were large, obnoxious and probably made by Amarrs’ slaves. None of this seemed to bother ‘Brick’ the Comms officer, as he continued to fill the docking array with irritating smoke breaking every safety rule in the book. Unfortunately the only ‘books’ he read only really contained pictures.
They were waiting for their Cormorant destroyer christened ‘Innocence’, the last functioning ship in her father’s once respectably sized fleet, to dock with the strange vessel sensors had picked an hour ago.
The hastily picked boarding crew waited. The destroyer pirouetted around in space getting a good angle. She was youngest of them, daughter of the founder and their reluctant captain.
She looked a lot like him, her father. Once a pioneering fighter, a Capsuleer in the Caldari – Gallente independence war he had used his vast retirement fund to start a corporation. He set out with the intent that it would be a non pod pilot corporation, mistake number one, and that would produce only goods for peaceful benefit of the States citizens. There’s no money in peace. Mistake number two.
A military man of honor sparring with the Mega Corporations and pod bound freelancers alike. Time again he rejected their buyout offers, using the last of his family fortune to prop up the ailing company. He surprised everyone with how long he held out.
Outvoted and outmaneuvered in the boardroom, if he could have met them in space, with rail and missile things would have been different he would lament. A shadow, an irrelevant hero of a war long over. Once the deal was finalized they were largely forgotten about. As long as a marginal profit was posted monthly, they were left alone. An overseer was put in charge as their administrator and de facto Financial Officer. He was a slight man who would probably struggle to cope with true planetary gravity let alone a hard days graft.
It was his responsibility to find the corps contracts. His competence in this was reflected in their corporate bank account, dancing on the red line, leaving nothing for uncertain times ahead.
Their normal contracts came from tagging along after combat missions, mopping up charred pirate remains left by the mission operative. These days the exponentially more efficient Noctis pilots snatch every profitable job almost as quickly as they scoop up the precious parts into their holds.
Today was different.
‘’Wake up Captain… Persephone!’’
The curt voice of her comms officer using her name rather than rank dragged her away from thoughts of the past to todays particular nightmare.
Docking with this ship had been extremely difficult.
Because technically speaking, this drifting and sinister ship was still cloaked.
Part 2
Captain, a Captain I may be but in name only her thoughts trailed on. She was permitted to preside over the bridge and her team remained directly under her command.
Commands, she received them more often than she dished them out. The CFO really pulled the strings around here, holding their livelihood in his hands no one could argue. She took her honorary captaincy less and less seriously, turning up for duty barefoot, often in a state of undress. Pushing the boundaries of the upper management, just to see what would happen, an inquisitive mind left idle. She would sit at the captains console with her knees pulled up to her chest, resting her chin on them gazing out into space. A vision of authority.
‘’3 minutes to dock’’
The ship they were now about to board was discovered by chance. At first deemed to be a sensor glitch the closer they scanned the more of a reading they received. A Wreathe hull industrial, eerily drifting in space for who knows how long. Outfitted with a covert ops cloak, that was now chronically malfunctioning and sporadically revealing sections of the ship, as if to tease onlookers with her presence. The destroyers searchlights situated on her underbelly raked along its imagined surface, occasionally reflecting the hull wherever a section appeared.
Every 16 minutes its docking clamps would reveal themselves if for only a few seconds at a time, the auto coupler could not adequately process the information quick enough for a successful docking attempt, so manual it was. The person qualified in such an operation had only ever completed it in simulation. Such was the heavy reliance of automation and machine.
-- +00:45 Personal mission timer, boarding excursion into derelict vessel--
‘’Hard seal, you’re clear for mission go’’
Innocence was now firmly clamped to the mystery ship and would not let go until the team returned. The air inside was breathable but thick and unusually moist. Condensation collected on the two Minmatar made projectile weapons they had brought along. Mostly for piece of mind, as there weren’t even enough rounds even for one full clip, Inari and jack had to share between them. Neither had ever fired one.
Barrel mounted torches pieced the gloom, heavy water droplets, caught the narrow beam deny further vision into the gloom. Wet and oppressive, like the inside of some foul giant beast. They are thankful for the crisp air provided by breathing apparatus.
Inari was the last to enter, the bulkhead door slowly descending behind her. The first step into the ship her foot gave way slightly, a thin slime coated everything. She looked up sharply, thankful that no one had seen her slip, movement caught her eye.
‘’Who’s there?’’ Her gun whipped up dazzling the rest of the team.
Brick held his hand up to fight back the beam, taking one step towards her was enough for her to stand down. He could be quite intimidating but only when he wanted to be.
‘’No one, all the life boats are ejected remember. This place is empty,’’
‘’Maybe the odd cargo drone’’ Jack the engineering prodigy chirped in hopefully, he had an affinity with A.I. any drones they salvaged usually made their way into his personal collection. Whether management knew about it or not.
‘’Stop messing around, let’s go to work.’’ Persephone interrupted, it was unusual for her to pull rank so when she did they listened, ‘’I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to, in fact I don’t want to be here at all. This mission is a waste of time and we know it so let get on with proving it so we can get back.’’
The ‘Mission’ as the overbearing CFO onboard had dubbed it, was simple enough, search the ship for valuable cargo and if nothing of use was found determine the profitability of the covert ops cloak and prepare it for salvage. It had been suggested destruction of the vessel would be a less risky strategy, however survival of cargo and modules was not guaranteed. The earning potential of an intact Tech 2 cloak alone was worth the risk in human life.
Into the gloom.
The team press on.
Down to the darkness.