The Seven’s Brothel
Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Tsuguwa system – Planet VI
Caldari Navy Assembly Plant Station
26 January YC 127
“Good morning, Ms Voiras,” I said, walking into Level 2 agent’s office, “I was getting bored and thought that maybe you could provide some entertainment in a form of a security mission to me.”
Ozanero raised her eyes from the datapad and for a moment something like disappointment flickered on her face. The expression was gone in a heartbeat and was replaced with professional friendliness.
“Good morning, Mr Korff,” replied the agent, “let me check my backlog.”
She tapped the datapad a few times and stared at it for a few seconds as if it offended her. Then she swiped the screen with a nervous gesture and glared at it some more. That continued for a couple of minutes after which Ozanero irritably moved the datapad aside and mumbled under her breath, “To hell with politics. I’ve got job to do.”
“Pardon?” I raised my eyebrows quizzically.
“Sorry, it’s nothing,” the agent said with a sigh of resignation and looked me in the eye, “Mr Korff, I gather that you are familiar with a gang called The Seven.”
Ozanero made a pause but it was clear that it was a statement rather than a question.
I nodded, “So it was you who took the investigation from Purkkoken.”
Again, a statement.
“Yes, it was transferred to me,” confirmed Ozanero, “as the complexity of the case exceeded the parameters of Level 1 missions and… for other reasons.”
I wanted to ask her if they were the same reasons for which I was taken off the case, but I didn’t want to betray Purkkoken’s trust for it would be immediately clear who gave me the inside information. Anyway, I was curious why she mentioned The Seven.
The agent continued, “We have recently discovered that the gang set up an illegal brothel in Ekura system. Although it was created for generating profit, the bandits themselves are not averse to such…” she pursed her lips, “entertainment. We have reasons to believe that their leader, Kruul, will visit the brothel today. I need you to go there and eliminate him.”
“What? In the brothel?”
“If needed, with the brothel,” corrected the agent.
I looked at her in disbelief, “You know that those thugs are slavers. I bet you any money that the girls working there are not willing collaborators, but were trafficked there as sex slaves. Do you want me to knowingly attack the civilians who are victims of that gang?”
A certain hardness appeared in Ozanero Voiras’s eyes which I never observed in Purkkoken’s.
“Mr Korff,” she said coldly, “the objective of this mission is to kill the gang leader Kruul. I don’t care how you achieve it, but I don’t give you a squad of marines to smoke him out of the brothel. Within that deadspace pocket you are authorised to take any necessary steps to complete your assignment. All I require from you is bring me a sample of Kruul’s DNA as evidence of his elimination. Do you accept the mission?”
So that’s how they play at Level 2, I thought sadly. I wasn’t going to destroy the brothel even if it meant a loss of the mission reward. The more disturbing thought was that I could let Kruul off the hook if I accepted the mission. Was it better to wash my hands and simply let another pilot, with no qualms, to handle it? No, looking the other way, while I had a chance to enforce the course of action which I considered right, was unconscionable.
I nodded firmly, “I do.”
Ozanero looked at me for a few seconds with a strange expression on her face. Then she reached for the datapad and tapped it a few times.
“I’ve sent the coordinates to your Aura,” she said, and added with a half smile, “Good luck, capsuleer.”
“What is it today – a mission or a combat site?” asked Aura when I boarded the Cormorant.
“A brothel,” I replied drily.
Aura raised her eyebrows and snickered, “You are flying to a brothel in a destroyer armed with seven 125-mm Tech II railguns? Are you trying to compensate for something?”
I ignored the innuendo and explained the mission.
Aura whistled in surprise and said, “So you are back on The Seven case. I thought Purkkoken said that you would not be let anywhere near it.”
I shrugged my shoulders, “I thought so too. To be fair, Ozanero acted as if giving me this mission was against her better judgement. Unfortunately, I am not on the same terms with her as I am with Purkkoken, so I can’t just invite her to Merimetso and ask her to spill the beans.”
“Give it some time,” said Aura soothingly, “it’s just the second mission that you fly for her. Anyway, talking about the mission, what should we expect?”
I opened the brief and looked at the threat assessment, “Cruisers. Almost 100%.”
Aura opened a fitting window and looked at it sceptically, “Are you going to face The Seven’s cruiser with a fit optimised to resist only kinetic damage? Those guys are not Guristas, they shoot everything.”
I scratched my head, “You are right but I don’t have a fit which provides omni-resistance. Maybe it’s a good time to try that active shield tank.”
Aura smiled enigmatically, “What if I told you that you didn’t need to worry about the tank at all?”
“The way you say it, I am already worried. I just don’t know about what.”
“Have you ever heard of 150-mm railguns?”
I laughed, “I see you take my ‘compensation efforts’ to heart.”
“Exactly! You’ve gotta have something to compensate for the miniscule size of your,” Aura made a pause and finished, “shield.”
“And how are they going to help? Even with one-fifties I don’t think I can destroy cruisers quickly enough. They’ll go through my shield and armour faster than I go through theirs.”
“Only if they can reach you. The bigger guns don’t just give you more firepower, they also give you more range. Look here,” Aura opened a new window with a list of equipment, “if you install these modules, you’ll be able to hit the bastards from the distance of 86 kilometres. That’s beyond even a cruiser firing range.”
[Cormorant, Kaukokärki]
Signal Amplifier II
Signal Amplifier II
5MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive
Kinetic Shield Amplifier II
Compact Thermal Shield Amplifier
150mm Railgun II
150mm Railgun II
150mm Railgun II
150mm Railgun II
150mm Railgun II
150mm Railgun II
150mm Railgun II
Small Hybrid Locus Coordinator II
Small Ionic Field Projector II
Spike S x10000
Iron Charge S x10000
Then she enthusiastically walked me through the slot configuration.
“The Signal Amplifiers and the Small Ionic Field Projector will increase your targeting range. The rig will reduce your shield,” she smiled apologetically, “but, as I said, it is of secondary importance. The optimal range of 150-mm railguns is 33% greater than that of one-twenty-fives. It will be further enhanced by the Small Hybrid Locus Coordinator rig. You’ll need a microwarpdrive instead of the afterburner, so that you can quickly get out of the hostiles’ firing range. In the remaining two mid-slots I threw in a couple of Shield Amplifiers, just in case. You can change them depending on the expected type of damage,” she looked eagerly at me, “What do you think?”
I loaded the configuration into the fitting window and after a short examination shook my head, “No, I can’t fit it. That Small Hybrid Locus Coordinator rig increases the power consumed by the railguns. I’ll need an auxiliary power core but then I’ll have to uninstall one of the Signal Amplifiers which will reduce the targeting range. Besides, even with all the proposed enhancements, 86 clicks is beyond my optimal firing range, so the damage will fall off.”
Aura snorted, “Of course, you can’t. Not with your skills. You need to train Hybrid Weapon Rigging to reduce the rig drawbacks, and Advanced Weapon Upgrades to reduce power consumption by hybrid turrets. Sharpshooter skill will ensure that your optimal range will be 87 km.”
“And to what level do I need to train those skills?” I asked suspiciously.
“To level 5.”
I gasped, “That will take weeks! And I need to complete the mission today.”
Aura rolled her eyes, “Says a man with 6 million unallocated skill points in his head. What are you keeping them for? It’s not like they earn you any interest.”
“Well, just in case,” I answered defensively.
“This is the case,” said Aura emphatically, “If killing the leader of an infamous slaver gang is not a good reason to use your hoarded skill points, then I don’t know what is.”
I sighed, “Okay, okay, you are right, but even if I train the skills, I don’t have the modules to fit the ship. I’ll have to fly to Jita to buy them.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” she said sternly. A riding crop appeared in her hand and she tapped it on the palm of her other hand, “Chop chop!”
Aura’s modelling was spot on. As soon as I trained those three skills to level 5, the proposed modules fitted into the Cormorant like hand in glove. Maybe it was possible to further improve the destroyer’s characteristics by using blingy modules or implants, but with 99.59% power grid utilisation and 99.12% CPU allocation we really squeezed the last drops of performance from a Tech II fit.
As the fit required different rigs, I decided to keep Merimetso for encounters with Guristas and buy a new Cormorant for sniping.
When the new destroyer was bought and fitted, Aura raised a very important question, “What do you wanna call it?”
I thought for a while and said, “Kaukokärki. In my native dialect it means ‘long point’ or ‘distant spear’.”
Kaukokärki
Aura nodded approvingly, “Nice. Hints at the purpose without giving it away. Also, doesn’t sound like a pet name which you gave Merimetso. You may find yourself in a situation where you’ll have to spend ships like ammo. Better not to get too attached to them.”
Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Ekura system – Mission location
The Damsels Wimpy Brothel
When I arrived to the mission location, I sighed with relief – Kruul’s cruiser was on the grid and was not docked. It meant that I could take him on without risking civilians’ lives. Eager to test my new fit, I chose the brothel as the pivot and willed Kaukokärki into an 85-km orbit around it. As the distance between the structure and the ship decreased, I enjoyed the feeling of invulnerability and anticipated an easy one-sided battle. That feeling didn’t last long as my HUD suddenly started displaying damage notifications. Something was hitting me pretty hard!
Tower Sentry Drone
It turned out that while the cruisers were clustered around the brothel, a solitary Tower Sentry Drone was placed some distance away, and I was actually flying toward it. As the shield damage indicator crept across the HUD, I had to decide what to do. I could turn back, build the distance and destroy the drone from a safe range. On the other hand, it was just one drone.
“Let’s see what these one-fifties are capable of,” I muttered and targeted the hostile machine.
The new rails worked like a charm – 30 seconds after my first salvo the drone was shredded to pieces. During the same period it managed to reduce my shield only by 15% which was quite acceptable. Apart from that stuff-up with the drone, the rest of the mission was a walk in the park. First, I targeted the fast frigates and destroyed them before they could get into their firing range. Then I took care of the two cruisers which ineffectually tried to hit me with missiles. Finally, when the overview was clear of red icons, I turned my guns toward Outpost Headquarters and reduced it to a pile of floating rubble. Quite satisfied with the results, I praised Aura for the brilliant idea of the sniper fit and started aligning to Tsuguwa stargate.
Seven Death Dealer
Seven Grunt
Kruul
Rogue Mercenary Thorn
“Hey, didn’t you forget something?” asked Aura, interrupting my manoeuvre.
“What?”
“The evidence.”
I slapped my head, “Right,” but then a thought occurred to me, “Wait a moment. We have looted the wreck of Kruul’s cruiser and there was no Kruul’s corpse there.”
“…which means that what was left of Kruul did not qualify as a whole corpse,” finished Aura.
I groaned, “Oh no, not again,” remembering the mission when I had to get Phenod’s DNA out of a bloody mess.
Then I remembered something, “Aura, remember how you recalibrated the overview at Gurista Hideout so that it showed smaller debris? Does it work on, you know, body parts?”
Aura knit her brow and said, “There is only one way to check.”
She reconfigured the overview and the window was filled with descriptions of scorched, broken and twisted objects. I tentatively scrolled the list but it was too long.
“Can you filter the list so that it shows only human remains?”
“Hmm… Give me a minute. I need to find an authoritative reference,” said Aura and froze.
I waited patiently and soon the list was reduced to what looked like a table of contents of an anatomical atlas. The important difference was that some body parts appeared several times, implying that there was more than one person on the ship.
I grimaced, “Is there any way to tell which parts belonged to Kruul?”
Aura spread her hands helplessly, “Only after a DNA analysis.”
I closed my eyes and muttered through clenched teeth, “Damn you, Ozanero.”
Lonetrek region – Okela constellation
Tsuguwa system – Planet VI
Caldari Navy Assembly Plant Station
I was walking down the corridor toward the security department. Behind me slowly crawled a forklift which carried a large metal crate. As we approached Ozanero Voiras’s office, I opened the door and indicated to the driver to move the crate in.
The driver shook his head, “No, boss, the doorway is too narrow.”
I shrugged nonchalantly and said, “Then leave it outside. Just make sure that it doesn’t block the passage.”
While I was paying the driver, Ozanero emerged from her room and stared at the crate in confusion.
“What is this box, Mr Korff?” she asked trying to take control of the situation.
I looked at her feigning a mild surprise, “The evidence, Ms Voiras. As you requested.”
The agent lifted the metal lid and, on observing the contents, immediately dropped it and put her (other) hand to her mouth with a queasy look on her face.
“But…” she stammered, “but I asked just for a sample of the DNA.”
“Unfortunately, Ms Ozanero,” I said in an apologetic voice, “when I inspected the cruiser wreck I did not find a neatly sealed specimen bag labelled ‘Kruul’s DNA’. For that matter, none of the body parts I found had any identifying tags. So, I had no other choice but to gather complete evidence. I hope it won’t take your laboratory technicians long to sort out who is who.”
With a pleasant smile I waved my good-bye to the bewildered agent and walked away. When she was out of earshot my smile transformed into an evil grin as I murmured, “That will teach you to trust your pilots, Ms Smarty-Pants.”
