This short story was inspired by real events in New Eden. Names and star systems have been changed to protect the anonymity of the pilots involved. What follows is sort of fiction — and another attempt (not my first) at writing.
*************
Suspended in gel and wired into the ship’s nervous system, a capsuleer’s thoughts were translated by implants into clean data—synthetic voice, clipped text-bursts, or raw intent—riding laser-tight comms between hulls, systems & stars, across the void of New Eden. Replies didn’t reach ears. They arrived inside the pod-feed as overlays and sensations, as natural as breathing used to be.
“Natural,” in the same way a scar eventually became part of your skin.
The corp channel drifted under everything: under route calculations, under market pings, under the soft lies stations told. It was always there, a cold thread woven through the skull.
A presence joined.
ROOK VEYLAN: Greetings...
His salute didn’t make a sound. Instead, it bloomed as a bright glyph at the edge of vision, paired with a faint pulse of recognition—comradeship translated into harmless bytes on a hyperdata-stream.
Another presence flared immediately after—hot, ragged, too fast for the smoothing routines to hide.
SABLE WRAITH: Guys. Quick question.
A hitch in the feed—hesitation rendered as a fraction of delay.
SABLE WRAITH: If someone attacks and my drones kill them… I can strip the wreck, right?
Two replies snapped back almost at once. Clean, low-emotion packets—the kind veterans used when they didn’t want responsibility sticking to their hands.
HASK MEREV: Yes.
IRON KADE: Yes. If you’re still on grid.
Sable Wraith’s signal surged again, spilling context like a cracked seal.
SABLE WRAITH: I’m huffing. A ship warped in on me earlier. I bounced.
SABLE WRAITH: Forgot my drones were even out.
SABLE WRAITH: Do I wait for him to fire first… or do I swat him if he gets close?
...
For a beat, the channel held still.
Not silence—attention. The kind of attention that made the space between stars feel crowded.
Then a steadier presence: measured, procedural. The sensation of a checklist sliding into place.
LYSA MINORI: If you’re in Empire space, don’t fire first.
A thin railing over a cliff.
Hask’s reply cut through it with heavier gravity. Those who lived in the dark didn’t trust railings.
HASK MEREV: You still in the hole?
A micro-beat—
Sable Wraith’s presence flickered thinking… except it wasn’t “thinking” the old way. It was intent assembling, cautious, as if words might attract teeth.
SABLE WRAITH: Yeah. I came back.
That should have been nothing. It landed like confession.
HASK MEREV: Then be very careful.
Sable Wraith pushed back—not with argument, with proof. Proof was how the young tried to buy safety.
SABLE WRAITH: I put down the Sleepers earlier and came back.
SABLE WRAITH: Now I’m mining in my Pioneer.
Pioneer. The name carried a brief, absurd warmth—like a corporate slogan printed on a coffin.
HASK MEREV: That ship is probably scouting you.
Sable Wraith spiked defensively, clinging to numbers like numbers were armor plating.
SABLE WRAITH: He’s small though. Like fifteen hundred total tank.
SABLE WRAITH: Shield, hull, armor.
SABLE WRAITH: I’ve got four drones. I've got this!
Savouring the young capsuleer's words, Rook could feel the steady thump of active modules. A mining cycle. Profit ticking like a heartbeat. A lullaby. He'd been there before... But he continued listening the ethereal conversation.
Hask answered with the emotional flatline of experience.
HASK MEREV: Tank numbers don’t matter if he’s buying time for friends.
SABLE WRAITH: But I’m scanning constantly! I only saw one.
Hask didn’t hesitate.
HASK MEREV: Friends can be one jump over.
HASK MEREV: Or out of scan range.
HASK MEREV: Or cloaked.
And then C. Runnel dropped in like a cold coin into boiling oil.
C. RUNNEL: Or right next to you...
The words left residue. A phantom sensation in every pod: the imagined pressure of an unseen hull at point-blank range. The implants tried to keep fear polite. Fear refused.
Micro-beat—
Sable Wraith’s presence wavered. The pod-feed tagged it as STRESS EVENT: a small spike, a flicker, then—
SABLE WRAITH: …Well. Damn.
He tried to regain control with range and procedure—holding a ruler up to the void.
SABLE WRAITH: I keep d-scan at fourteen point four AU.
SABLE WRAITH: If he comes close, I’ll know.
Rook felt the lie in that the way you felt a hairline fracture in a hull panel: invisible until pressure made it fatal.
Hask shifted to drill-clarity. The feed carried urgency—clean, sharp—without panic.
HASK MEREV: Standard drill:
HASK MEREV: Align to a safe spot. Stay at speed. Be ready to warp.
HASK MEREV: If anything lands on your grid, you leave. No debate.
Sable Wraith’s next burst wasn’t confidence anymore. It arrived like someone reaching for a handhold in the dark.
SABLE WRAITH: Can you come and check?
SABLE WRAITH: Bring something heavy?
A pause. You could feel the corp’s collective map unfurling: routes, distance, mass limits, time. Not unkindness—triage.
Sable Wraith came again, sounding smaller.
SABLE WRAITH: Seriously. Please!
Hask asked the anchor point.
HASK MEREV: Where are you?
Micro-beat—longer this time. The kind that meant his attention wasn’t on comms.
When the answer arrived, it carried a wash of embarrassment—heat translated into the gel.
SABLE WRAITH: Abudban.
SABLE WRAITH: Heimatar.
SABLE WRAITH: If it’s clean, you can huff too.
A bargaining chip. A very human instinct.
Hask’s reply carried muted frustration—less at the kid than at geometry.
HASK MEREV: It’ll take me a while.
SABLE WRAITH: How many jumps?
HASK MEREV: Thirty-two. And I have to reship first.
Thirty-two jumps. A lifetime, measured in gates and patience. A joke, measured against a cloaked hunter.
Sable Wraith tried to turn helplessness back into a plan.
SABLE WRAITH: You coming in for combat or huffing?
Then, like darkness leaning close enough to be smelled, the old question surfaced.
SABLE WRAITH: Is there any way to spot a cloaked ship?
C. Runnel’s response carried a faint synthetic chuckle—humor packaged to keep fear from spilling.
C. RUNNEL: Sure.
C. RUNNEL: Walk into the trap. You’ll “spot” it when it decides you matter.
Sable Wraith’s signal trembled. A laugh tried to form and failed, leaving only thin static.
SABLE WRAITH: You’re making me paranoid.
A new presence slid in—older, steadier, with the weight of someone who had paid tuition to the void more than once.
MARA KHATRI: Good.
MARA KHATRI: Paranoia is experience arriving early.
MARA KHATRI: Don’t fly what you can’t afford to replace three times over.
A beat—ritual, stubborn humanity.
Sable Wraith clung to the rule like it was a shield hardener.
SABLE WRAITH: My Pioneer’s only twenty million…
And then—
He cut out.
Not the channel going quiet. Him. A sudden absence wasn’t silence; it was a shape. A hole. The pod-feed marked it as INTERRUPTED INPUT.
For one long second, nobody spoke.
Because everyone recognized that moment.
The moment when a transponder bloom appeared where there hadn’t been one. The moment when your overview rearranged itself. The moment when the void stopped being theoretical.
Rook’s presence finally punched through—low and immediate, carrying a sharp overlay of intent that bypassed niceties.
ROOK VEYLAN: Align. NOW!
ROOK VEYLAN: Pick a safe spot. Keep d-scan running.
ROOK VEYLAN: If anything lands on you, you don’t “see what happens.” You leave.
He didn’t add the rest.
He didn’t have to.
In New Eden, the lesson always arrived the same way:
Quiet first.
Then contact.
Then wreck.
No comments:
Post a Comment