His Home Was Among the Stars

note: This was my entry in the YC125 New Eden Capsuleer's Writing Contest. This short story won Honorable Mention in the prose category, and the Minmatar Culture Special Topic Award. 

His name was Tulio, and his home was among the stars. It was just me and him, in those days, before…everything. I wouldn’t meet Hummingbird for several more years. The memories of the months Tulio and I spent together, out on patrol, hunting the trade lanes for wayward travelers, traders or deep space miners, they will haunt me for the rest of my days.

I didn’t know it then, but those were the golden days of my life. Living the carefree lifestyle of an independent pirate, Tulio and I roamed from Molden Heath to the Outer Ring, and every other region in the New Eden Cluster. Without a care in the world, living in the moment, we flew wherever our hearts took us. Our days were filled with the mad, joyful capers of youth - sticking up miners and explorers, joining in goodfights with adventurous destroyer pilots, cheerfully taking whatever the stars offered us, and giving nothing back - as the pirates code suggests. Together, we felt invincible. And our nights- oh, our nights. Lying together in the starlight, being inside of him, our bodies and minds joined in a way no non-capsuleer could ever understand…

I remember the night before our last mission together. I was lying on top of him in the spacedock of the Uemon VIII - Moon 3 - Perkone Factory Station. The lights of the incoming spacecraft twinkled romantically as they passed by overhead. His body was both smooth and firm underneath me. I closed my eyes dreamily. My mustache nuzzled softly against his long, hard, pink shaft -

“Uh, sir?” A Perkone technician in yellow overalls looked up at me.

“Yes?” I asked.

“Sorry to disturb you. When you’re finished…uh…whatever you’re doing…I’m here for the repairs you ordered for this Stabber.”

I slid down off Tulio’s chassis and landed beside him. “Go ahead,” I said, “I’ll be getting a drink in the station bar. Let me know when you’re done.”

“Will do, sir. Whoa - nice paint job! Is that the Zakura Shumyu skin?”

“Sure is,” I nodded.

“She’s a beut, sir.”

“He,” I corrected. “He is beautiful.”

The next day, Tulio and I undocked and laid in a course for the Kalevala Expanse. 

An independent capsuleer faction that styled itself “Pandemic Horde” was based in R1O-GN in those days. They were much like any other of the capsuleer organizations who claim empires in the hinterlands of null security space. Noncombatant ships, some of them quite powerful and well equipped, bustled about their space in large numbers, carrying on with the endless drudgery of exterminating rogue drones and mining asteroids.

It was a rich hunting ground for pirates, in other words. 

The borders of Horde space stood wide open, undefended. Their security forces, such as they were, were embroiled in an ill-fated attempt to dislodge another capsuleer faction from their territory in the south, leaving only a few token fighters sitting on the undock of their Keepstar, to protect the industrial fleet at home.

My darling Tulio, his long, smooth hull glistening with starlight, thrust deeply into the pipe through hostile space, encountering no resistance. The stargates opened almost eagerly before him, as if they yearned for the passage of strange vessels into their welcoming orifices through the fabric of space-time. 

Soon we were in the Kalevala Expanse. Tulio’s directional scanner lit up with the signals of asteroid mining vessels and rogue drone extermination craft. We located a likely target, a Procurer class mining barge. With a thought and a waggle of my agile fingers, I activated Tulio’s warp drive.

The hapless miner was caught with their pants down. Before they could react, Tulio’s warp disruptor had cut off their escape. High energy projectiles spurted from the tips of his autocannons, splattering flashes of plasma across the barge’s wide backside. As their shields failed, the rounds penetrated deeper and deeper into their hull, leaving gaping holes in their chassis. My jaw clenched with tension as we activated Tulio’s afterburner and drove faster and faster circles around the target. It was all too much for the unfortunate barge to withstand, and soon they were torn apart.

“Ahhhh,” I sighed deeply, releasing the tension that always comes with a fight. The flash of the miner’s exploding warp core lit up my ocular implants. I relaxed into the sticky, viscous goo that filled my capsule and covered me. I could feel the thrum of Tulio’s antimatter reactor reverberating through me like a heartbeat, surrounding me, embracing me, making me feel safe, as we looted the wreck and flew on looking for another target.

Another ship fell beneath the virile thunder of Tulio’s autocannons, then another, and another, as we closed in on R1O-GN. I was happy, smiling. Tulio’s automated systems sensed my mood and injected a healthy dose of Matari Spirit into my pod goo. He played an old favorite song of ours, the ancient Jovian shanty “It’s a Pirate’s Life for Me” and I sang along. Only a pirate, with a cargo hold full of gently used mining lasers and drone damage amplifiers, can know that feeling of pure, carefree joy. I don’t think I will ever be that happy again.

On the gate into R1O, we spotted another Stabber. Far from the sleek purple beauty of Tulio’s long, smooth shaft, this Horde warship was covered with rust and grime. Many of my Sebestior brethren favor this neglected appearance, as a mark of pride in our shared tribal history of survival through the hardest of times. I have always had somewhat more refined tastes.

“Easy, my love,” I whispered to Tulio. He circled the gate, catlike, 50km from the ugly Stabber. I could feel his eagerness for battle through the vibrations of his hull. But the Horde pilot would not take the bait, instead jumping into R1O.

Neither I nor Tulio was inclined to give up so easily. As one, we activated our microwarpdrive, thrusting into the stargate. We jumped into R1O in pursuit and found the other Stabber loitering on the gate.

Tulio’s autocannons blazed as we swooped into an attacking maneuver. The other Stabber tried to veer away, firing a few wild shots in our direction, but his pilot was lacking in skills.  Great chunks of his rust covered hull were blasted away. He struggled impotently to escape, but soon his hull collapsed.

While we fired the final volley to finish off the weaker Stabber, alarm klaxons began to sound. The directional scanner scrolled through an overwhelming list of approaching vessels. As the vacuum of space reverberated with the thunderous clap of the Stabber’s exploding antimatter reactor, a Malediction dropped out of warp beside us. Then a Stiletto, a Jaguar, a Rifter, and a Battle Badger. A warp disruptor cut off our escape, and the jump gate refused to authorize our passage on the grounds of aggression. More and more Pandemic Horde vessels filled local space. A Gnosis, an Executioner, three Vexors, a Proteus. They kept on coming, dozens of them. Finally, darkness fell upon Tulio and I, as a monstrous Ragnarok blotted out the sun of R1O-GN.

His name was Tulio. He lived among the stars, and among the stars he died.

I wish I could tell you some heroic tale of Tulio’s last stand. I wish I could say that he struggled valiantly to the end, taking a dozen Horde vessels with him. But this is no fairytale. This is New Eden. In New Eden, there are no happy endings. The truth is that in one moment, I was inside of him, surrounded by him, feeling his strength and speed and vigor, and the next moment he was gone, so fast I saw nothing but a flash. The next thing I knew, my tears were mingling with the saline medium of the clone vats in Uemon VIII - Moon 3 - Perkone Factory Station as I choked up my nutrition tube…

My beloved Tulio was gone.

xxxxxx

…two years later…

I was already aligning for warp and issuing a recall order to my drones as my final volley of Mjolnir light missiles hammered into the Ishtar pilot’s capsule. My ocular implants registered video of the pod, rupturing in a mass of freezing goo, the pilot’s muscles contracting reflexively on contact with hard vacuum, her naked limbs reflecting the pink glare of MJ-5F9. Her eyeballs boiling in a puff of outgassing vapor. I smiled grimly.

“For Tulio,” I whispered, kissing the ring of twisted shrapnel that I wear these days.

The Pandemic Horde Standing Fleet dropped out of warp - 63 warships in kitchen sink configuration, bristling with weaponry of all sorts. Predictably, they arrived just in time to get a good look at my new ship - a souped up Osprey, stolen from the Caldari Navy. A nice ship. Technically superior to Tulio in almost every way. I had even become fond of it. But it was not him, of course. As usual, the Standing Fleet could only watch helplessly as I warped away.  My smile widened.

“Scratch another bogey,” Hummingbird said across comms, her voice crackling with the subspace distortion caused by her covert operations cloaking device. “One day you’re going to have to tell me who Tulio was. He must have been quite a guy,” she sighed.

‘One day I shall,” I said.

The pilot of the industrialized rogue drone extermination vessel would be awake already in the nearby Keepstar, just a few AU away. If it was her first time…maybe she was rattled a bit. More likely, she was already tossing back a pint in the local saloon, all fresh faced and well hydrated. Pink. Positively glowing with perfect health.

We capsuleers, we do not bear scars on our bodies, unless as pure affectation. I have died a hundred deaths. Easy deaths. Hard deaths. Yet when you look at me, you still see the fresh faced youth who conned his way into the Republic University all those years ago. We are immortal. Whatever horrors we may endure, life goes on for us. The ones we love pass away, and we go on. But we bear scars of the soul, wounds that will never heal. Our hearts become more akin to black, ticking clockwork than flesh and blood. Fortunes are easy to come by, when you are a capsuleer. Luxuries become boring. The pleasures of the flesh…a momentary distraction. But vengeance…vengeance is forever…

…I loved that Stabber…

“Loot secured,” Hummingbird crackled over the secure band. “Hey boss, we’ve been here awhile. Maybe we should try Goon space next, or maybe FRT.”

 “How many Horde pilots have we killed?” I asked slowly.

“I dunno,” Hummingbird said. “We’re the biggest dealer in certified pre-owned Drone Damage Amplifier IIs east of Jita, if that tells you anything.”

I closed my eyes. “Find us another target,” I said.

“Will do, boss,” she crackled.

I felt the ship around me. Sleek, smooth…and cold. I smiled thinly. “Come, Hector, let us wait together here…in the dark.”

With a twitch of my eyebrow, I activated our cloaking device.

Operation Spookybird - Part 2

note: this is reposted from the EVE University forums, dated the 28th of April, 2023

Welp...that ended earlier than I had hoped. I guess consider this an AAR. Still, I'm pretty happy with how the expedition went. I'm going to reship soon and go back at it anyway. It's just too much fun out there. So this is how it happened...

MJ-5F9

MJ is a small system. Everything is visible on d-scan from everywhere. The population in local seems to range from about 250 to about 600. Most of the time, these are all Pandemic Horde pilots, except for me. Occasionally, other solo PvPers come through the system, or small gangs. They chase the ratters around, rob the ESS, hang out for a little while, and then leave. Most of the time its just me and Horde. Horde members are bustling about, coming and going all the time. The standing fleet hangs out on the undock of Horde's capitol Keepstar. I'm not sure what their usual numbers are, because I try not to wait around until the all land on grid, but it's more than enough to kill me if they can catch me.

I have to do everything fast here. Log in, dscan the anomalies. Find a ratter, warp in, attack the ratter. Spam the directional scanner at short range to hopefully detect the blob a second or two earlier. If the blob doesn't come, kill the ratter, kill the pod, loot the wreck, warp to a safe spot and cloak up. If the blob does come, I just warp off.

With the ONI's excellent align time, I can get away every time - as long as I don't make any dumb mistakes. Of course, I do make dumb mistakes sometimes.

Everything needs to happen very quickly. As soon as I'm at a safe, I'm reloading missiles, repairing modules, and then d-scanning for another target. Sometimes I can kill several ratters before anyone really seems to notice I'm there. It's best to go from one target to the next as quickly as possible until they start chasing me around.

The cloaking device on my ONI is absolutely essential. A really good prober in here only needs a very short time to probe me down, because the system is so small. Without a cloak, to wait out my aggression timer to do a safe logoff in space, I would need to bounce around the system, constantly warping from safe spot to safe spot to keep from being probed. That's pretty tedious work after awhile. So I prefer to fit a cloak.

Week 1

Immediately after slipping into MJ, probably unnoticed, I began d-scanning combat anomalies. This is the drone lands, so they are all rogue drone sites, if that makes a difference to anyone.

The nullsec ratting vessel of choice, nowadays, is the Ishtar. There are usually a few Ishtars working the anoms 24/7 in MJ. The poor man’s Ishtar is the Vexor, usually a few of those around too. Other than that, some folks rat in Marauders. I might attempt to kill a Marauder with an ONI if it was in a backwater system somewhere. Heck, why not? People have killed carriers solo with Hecates. But in MJ it would just take too long. Fights need to start and end here within a couple minutes. Everything is visible on dscan from everywhere. So I leave the Marauders alone. Occasionally, one may see some other unorthodox ratting ship out there, but it’s 90% Ishtars and Vexors, so that’s what I come prepared to kill.

My first target was Koritus One, in a Vexor. I warped in, blew them up with a few salvos of Mjolnir light missiles (everything here is shield tanks), looted the wreck, and warped off. I would be seeing Koritus One, and their siblings, Korituses Two and Three, again. More on serial afk ratters later.

Soon, another Vexor fell. I dropped off the loot in my medium secure container, anchored at a safe spot, then cloaked up. It was a work night, and I didn’t have much time to play, so I brushed my teeth and got ready for bed. Then 15 minutes later, when my aggression timer had expired, I returned to the keyboard and did a safe logoff.

The next night I logged on, killed two more Vexors and their pods, and logged off. This is my work-week pattern. I get 45 minutes to an hour to play before bed. I don’t want to waste that time on EVE’s more tedious aspects. I just want to log on and get constant PvP action until I log off.

That’s what’s great about this kind of expedition style PvP. On paper it’s like “yeah I killed a couple Vexors”, but the reality is that there’s so much more action that doesn’t appear on zkillboard. Like how in between the two kills, I warped in on an Ishtar and started lobbing missiles at him, only to have the blob land on grid ten seconds later. I warped off to a safe, then just for fun warped to a perch off their Keepstar. Then to a perch off a gate, watching them all chase after me. Then to another gate, just leading them on a wild goose chase for funsies, then back to my safe. Then 5 minutes later I murdered another ratter right under their noses. Non stop PvP action. No traveling around, no searching endlessly for a small number of targets.

The next night I spotted two very unusual ratting ships - a Cerberus and a Gnosis. Of course I had to bag them, just to have something on my killboard that isn’t shaped like a potato for once. The next night I got my first Ishtar of the expedition, then started killing them pretty much daily from there on out.

More Vexors, more Ishtars, more Vexors, more Ishtars. One by one they went down. I had to run from as many fights as I won, but they couldn’t catch me.

I started burning through supplies. An ONI’s cargo hold is pretty small. There’s only so much space for ammo, cap booster charges, drones, nanite repair paste. I lose a lot of drones during emergency warp outs that need to be replaced. My blockade runner alt kept me supplied. In a desperate fight against a Praxis, I almost had the bastard, but had to warp off in low armor. That’s why I keep an armor repairer in my supply cache. Quickly deploy the mobile depot, fit the repairer, heal up, then back in business. Such is life when there’s nowhere to dock up.

Week 2

The pattern continued. Vexor, Vexor, Vexor, Ishtar, Vexor, Ishtar, Vexor, and so on and so forth. I began to put such a hurting on the ratters, and to frustrate the standing fleet guys, that they began actively trying to hunt me.

I began noticing standing fleet regulars, who had been chasing me around for a week, and who had no history of ratting ship losses, suddenly seeming to develop an interest in afk ratting. My pirate senses began tingling at certain ratters, so I passed on the attacks. They were trying to bait me. At one point an Ishtar warp disrupted me, and I had to burn out of range before warping off. The wonderful thing about light missiles, you know, is the range. In most cases I orbit at the edge of warp disruptor range, so it wasn’t too hard to disengage. I’m just sorry I didn’t kill the guy, as he was about one volley from going down when I had to run, but a Malediction was hot on my tail and I couldn’t wait another second.

They started deploying mobile observatories. I could no longer afk with impunity. It was kind of neat because thus far I had only heard of these things. Nobody had ever used one against me before. But as I prefer safe logoffs to afking for long periods, I didn’t feel particularly threatened. I also started seeing combat probes out most of the time.

I carried on slaying Ishtars and Vexors. I even nabbed an Omen, ratting in an asteroid belt. Sadly, the Omen was also somewhat potato shaped. My last full day in MJ was the most productive, getting me 11 kills. Including a pilot by the name of Kalsigh Ravencrest, which brings me to my next random digression.

Incorrigable AFK ratters

One thing that I have noticed while doing these sorts of expeditions is that I see the same characters over and over again. It is not uncommon that I’ll kill the same newbie afk ratting in the same system and the same fit two or three times. After that, one of two things usually happens. They either go to a different system to do their ratting, in which case I probably never see them again, or they start trying to get revenge.

The next time I go after them, they warp disrupt me or something. The standing fleet gets there 5 seconds after I do. Or they give up ratting altogether. I start seeing them running with the standing fleet, and they’re always first on grid when I go after someone else. Just chomping at the bit for a piece of me. Then I start noticing them popping up on the killboards. Some of the top PvPers in Pandemic Horde today are guys whose Vexors I was popping in R1O-GN a couple years ago. I like to think I was the catalyst for that. My own little personal butterfly effect. This is what makes EVE special for me. Everything we do has an effect beyond what we intend.

But then you get another type of player. Kalsigh Ravencrest is a perfect example. I first killed Kals on the 9th of November, 2021, afk ratting in Horde’s old HQ system, R1O-GN. Then I killed them again and again and again. And a bunch more times. Always afk ratting in the same place in a Vexor.

I started feeling a little bad for Kalsigh. I was thinking they must be a newbie, who simply didn’t know better. So I reached out and offered to sell them a discounted krabbing permit for just 100 million isk. They spurned my kindness with mean words that I won’t repeat in a respectable forum like this one. Still, I felt like a bully targeting the same character over and over, so I started passing on Kalsigh kills unless they were the only viable target available. Still I was killing them.

Then I took half a year off, logged out in R1O. When I logged in again, who did I spot afk ratting in a Vexor? Kalsigh. More kills. I took another half year, then moved to MJ. Who was there afk ratting? Kalsigh. And this time again, back from another break, I find them again. Far be it from me to judge anyone else’s playstyle, but this is just weird. What value do they see in ratting the same anoms in the same system, over and over again for literal years? Is piling up monopoly money in such a dull, plodding fashion really that satisfying to them? Or is this some kind of RMT thing? We may never know. Kalsigh is not the only one like this - incorrigible serial ratters. A strange breed of capsuleer.

Anyway…

The Death of Pomola

On my final night of the expedition, feeling cocky with 30 killmarks on my Navy Osprey, I warped in on a Caldari Navy Raven. I sometimes attack battleships. I got a nice Praxis kill in MJ once in an ONI. It can be done, although usually the standing fleet intervenes before I can finish them.

This fight started out pretty good. I was burning into their shields. They seemed to be buffer tanked, but I was making good progress, and nobody seemed to be warping in. After a moment, they began shooting back, and I began to take moderate damage.

Then, disaster struck. A poorly executed maneuver resulted in me bumping against the big collidable structure that’s in the middle of every anomaly. With my speed gone, a volley from the Raven dealt wrecking damage, stripping my shields. I decided to abort, and aligned for a warpout. But I just bumped against the structure again and couldn’t warp. Another volley finished me.

Lesson for next time- get better at manual piloting. And watch out for targets that sit right next to the structure.

Conclusion

In two weeks, I killed 21 Vexors, 6 Ishtars, 1 Gnosis, 1 Cerberus, 1 Omen, and 11 Capsules. I dealt 1.77 billion in damage, and lost my Osprey Navy Issue, worth 112 million. I probably spent around 88 million on expenses, supplies, etc., so let's call it an even 200 million that I invested in this expedition. Remember, this is piracy - the objective is not goodfights, it is profit. I didn't keep careful accounting of the loot, but according to zkillboard, there were about 108 million isk worth of loot drops. I didn't get all of that, but I got most. Let's call it 100 mil of revenue.

So unfortunately, Operation Spookybird was a failure. I did not achieve my objective of 100 killmarks, and I'm a hundred mil in the hole. The loot fairy really wasn't smiling on me out there. Quite a few people fit faction modules on their Ishtars, and I would have expected to get a few after this many kills. But all my targets were cheaply fitted except for one Ishtar that had one faction module, which did not drop. It's not easy money being a nullsec pirate, but fortunately I still have enough in the account from previous capers to keep me afloat.

Oh well. In spite of my objective failure, in the fun per hour metric, the operation was a great success. I'm already planning my next expedition.

Cheers to anyone who actually reads this rambling novella of an AAR. See you in space. ;D

Operation Spookybird - Part 1

note: the following article was originally posted on the EVE University forum. I figured I'd add it here since I haven't updated the ole blog for awhile.

Greetings, fellow Unistas! Some of you long-timers may remember me as Kalim Dabo, from the old days of 2011-2012. That character is long gone, sold off. Syeed has been my main for the last several years of this much more casual phase of my career.

I recently rejoined the Uni and have been considering how I might participate. For reasons that will become apparent as you read on, it’s a bit inconvenient for me at the moment to move to a campus or participate in Uni fleets. So I figured that the least I could do would be to share this log of my adventures here. Perhaps a few of you might be interested in what I do, or perhaps not, but feel free to discuss or ask questions about this operation, my playstyle, or piracy in general if the mood strikes you.

Background

On April 10, I set out from Uemon (the Forge lowsec) in an Osprey Navy Issue and, on a second account, a neutral covops scout. I slipped into nullsec at LXQ2-T, carefully scouting the frequently bubbled gate before jumping Syeed in. Then I quickly threaded the needle through Etherium Reach, and the Kalevala Expanse, into Perrigen Falls, to Z-ENUD. Pandemic Horde space, again. At that point, I started feeling like a trap was forming around me. I had to have been popping up on intel channels by that point. It was getting late anyway, so I logged off.

The next day I logged in and entered MJ-5F9, the headquarters of Pandemic Horde. Operation Spookybird commenced. 

The system had been prepared beforehand. A blockade runner alt was logged off at a safe spot, with a cargo hold full of supplies - drones, missiles, nanite repair paste, cap booster charges, drugs, armor and hull repairers. A secure container was anchored in space. Multiple bookmarks had been created on a previous expedition - safe spots, perches. I also carried a mobile depot in the cargo hold of my ONI, an essential piece of equipment.

Objectives

The prime objective of Operation Spookybird is to farm AFK ratters for their loot drops. This is straightforward, workmanlike piracy. Paying for my losses one gently used certified pre-owned Drone Damage Amplifier II at a time. E-bushido doesn’t enter into it. This is just getting as many kills as possible, while taking as few losses as possible, looting as many wrecks as possible, and little by little, hopefully making some profit. I don’t rat or mine or trade other than liquidating loot. I don’t do PI, I don’t run abyssals. This is how I make my isk. It doesn’t pay much, but it's honest work.

When I entered MJ, I decided on the following conditions to consider the expedition ended, successfully or otherwise:

1. I get 100 killmarks on my Osprey Navy Issue. Or…

2. They manage to kill me. Or…

3. We reach a negotiated solution. I am open to leaving MJ and moving my operation to, say…1DQ1-A…or something…if someone makes me a reasonable offer. It’s unclear to me if this is allowed by current E-Uni rules, so I will withdraw this condition if it’s not ok, and just go for 100 killmarks or death, no mercy no negotiation. If it is allowed, certainly I would honor the terms and spirit of any such agreement.

To hopefully accomplish these objectives, I will be using a variant of a tactic I wrote a guide for last year - https://apologizefornothing.blogspot.com/2022/12/the-dark-arts-afk-krab-farming-in.html

Pomola

I am doing this with a cloaky Osprey Navy Issue. That’s right, a cloaky Osprey Navy Issue.

Go on, get your chuckles in. Last chance.

Her name is Pomola, after the thunder god with the head of a moose, body of a man, and wings of an eagle, that protects the Greatest Mountain, Katahdin (in Wabanaki mythology).

Ok, here’s the fit.

Ok, this is getting wordy. I’ll end the OP like this. I’m on my second week of the expedition already, and a lot has happened. In the next post I’ll catch us up to the present, then I’ll continue to update this until the mission is complete (or until I get booted out of the Uni for this lol).